SHORT ESSAYS ON EARLY COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHY
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CHARLES W CUSHMAN Charles W Cushman (1896 – 1972) photographed a young America as it developed and progressed, travelling the country and recording the people and places of everywhere he went. Over the many years of this documentation, it is fascinating to see how his subjects have aged, how the cities and fashions have changed, and how the very technology used to record the events – his camera and film, are indeed also subject to change as new and improved film stock are produced. Cushman's scenes show an America emerging after the war as a great superpower. America 's newfound confidence is most apparent in these images and the work exudes with the ambition and great vision present during this period. The scenes photographed however seem so distant and unfamiliar to today. The poses and fashions of those Cushman choose to photograph are a world apart. Cushman used colour film when it was still in its relative infancy for the mass consumer. It is the filmic errors found in Cushman's early photography that I find most intriguing. Cyan steaks across the filmic surface where chemicals have not being processed correctly, accidental double exposures, and the fading of the colour layers. The fragility of the early film is most apparent; the process is a chemical reaction that has not yet been perfected. There are certain photographs in the Cushman archive that are so distorted by colour, they become but abstract streaks of silver colours. http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/cushman/index.jsp ______________________________________________________________________________________________
Technicolor with its bold hues has become a powerful symbol of Americas ' dominance in film production. Since the period of its implementation, Technicolor has dominated American and European film making, becoming the most widely used colour film in Hollywood . The makers of Technicolor held a tight grip upon their technologies, with restrictions upon use, and a clause stating: that only trained Technicolor staff may operate the cameras. As Dudley Andrew mentions ‘Technicolor's well-known method involved the company's participation and supervision at every stage of the filmmaking process'. The result of such restriction has meant that a significant period in film history is dominated by a single colour process. The technology of Technicolor, its look, and connotations, fill a significant block of film history. The film type has become imbued with American ideology and the very look of this film type has become linked in time to its period of implementation. It is the artificiality of this film-type, and many similar colour film stocks of this period that is so fascinating to me. The colour scheme of Technicolor, of bold vivid hues, is so distanced from reality, so artificial. I find the hyper-vivid colours associated with this film type work to distance the viewer from any perceived reality. Colour documentary footage of this period seems hard to appreciate as an event that has actually happened, the distance in time, the recording technologies, and the association with film making to fictional events all work to move the footage away from any sense of reality.
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COLLECTIVE MEMORIES Images recorded during World War II, of fighter pilots travelling into Europe, of German tanks moving towards Moscow, are images that have been repeatedly displayed and projected to the public in documentaries and films. For the past 60 years the familiar footage has been edited and projected in an attempt to give an impression of this period in time. All who have viewed this footage share a collective image of this point in time. One can look back nostalgically at other peoples recorded memories, events not of our lifetime. An entire population, raised on viewing such images, share an image of the past shaped by the footage they have all witnessed. The events of this war seem so distant and of another age, yet so familiar to our memories, because of this the reality of the scenes becomes difficult to appreciate.
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