Chronography 2:
Étienne–Jules
Marey
Overview
“When Etienne-Jules Marey invented his photographic gun to visualize at last the precise motions of doves in flight, it was certainly not to “geometricize” the passage of time (Dagonet, 1992). It was to produce time as much as space. More exactly, it was to produce something entirely different from both which we can call synopticity.
[...]
What is important about Marey looking at the successive images of the dove in flight impressed on the circular silver-coated plate is not [...] that he lost the passage of duration, since it is precisely to lose it that we went to great pains to invent his photographic gun! If anything, he was utterly fed up with “duree,” with uncontrolable, invisible fuzzy patterns of doves flying in the air without being seizable, fixable, catchable. (This is why, by the way, he never invented the movie camera, to the great shame of my Burgundian compatriots; what Marey wanted was to invent the anti-movie camera! Something that would turn movememtn into a succession of images synoptically and not successively visible.)
[...]
Marey is not losing the lived and rich durée of the dove for the poor and cold geometry of the dove. On the contrary, he is adding to the flight of the dove, something never observed by anyone on earth before, the enrapting contemplation of successive motions transformed, on the plate, into coexisting shapes. He has not “degraded” time into space as Heidegger would say; the leap is more more innovative and daring that that: the few flash seconds of the dove’s flight have been transformed into an ever-lasting silver photograph that can be contemplated for hours and quickly scanned by Marey’s gaze again and again, in search of structural features...”
Bruno Latour, Trains of Thought: The Fifth Dimension of Time and its Fabrication, 182-183.
Instructions
Unlike Muybridge’s technique, which dis-integrates instants of time into separate images, Marey’s chronophotographs collapse all instants of time into one single image. Although the instants remain separate, the integration allows the passage of time to become more intuitively visible.
This investigation could begin with the images you produced for Chronography 1: Edweard Muybridge. Alternatively, if that series did not work as you expected or hoped, or if you think you need to generate diffeernt or capture more instants for this second iteration of the work, feel free to restage and reshoot or redraw.
When you lay out instants in one image uestions will emerge about the spacing of instants in relation to the duration of time represented, whether every instant is represented equally or whether there are different densities of instants. The work itself doesnt need to resolve these questions, instead these questions can allow us to develop a conversation about what is implied, enabled, made convincing or dubious, with each approach in relation to the subject/object of interest.
Extra-credit: Forgery
You are invited to make a convincing forgery by reorganizing instants, and/or inserting manufactured instants to create something convincing but untrue.
To make a convincing forgery, one has to have a good amount of control over the technique. Since Marey aspires to a scientific method for representing a duration, his technique is systematic. That system can be subverted in strategic ways to produce forgeries or fictitious events that did not happen but seem convincing within the representational system.
Required Reading:
Marta Braun, Picturing Time, Chapter 3.
Optional Reading:
Marta Braun, Picturing Time, Chapter 2.
Photographic Methods:
For a burst on an iPhone:
- Open the Camera app and frame your shot.
- On an iPhone XS, iPhone 11, or newer, swipe the Shutter button all the way to the left. On an iPhone X or older, just tap and hold the Shutter button.
- Alternatively, you can go to Settings > Camera > Use Volume Up for Burst and then hold the Volume Up button on the side of your iPhone. The second method works regardless of the model.
- You’ll see a counter in the center that shows the number of photos taken. Let go of the button when you’ve taken enough photos or have captured what you wanted.
Step 2:
If not a burst, export the video to stills.
Step 3:
Import the stills into Photoshop as separate layers.
- Gather the images into one folder.
- Open a new document matching the dimensions of your source images. (Quick way, open an image and Save As something new.)
- Select all of the source images and drag them together into Photoshop. Release them over the general workspace. The first image should show up with a superimposed “X.” (In Photoshop CS5, the images will stack one at a time as layers in your current document when you hit “Enter.” Note: In older version of Photoshop, dragging the files into the workspace will simply open each one up as separate files)
- Continue to press “Enter” until all of the images are loaded as individual layers.
- Rearrange the layers into the correct order, if necessary.
Step 4:
Adjust the contrast of layers.
Step 5:
Change the blend mode of all layers to ‘Linear Dodge’ or ‘Exclusion’ to create superimpositions of all layers in the series.
Other Relevant Tutorials
Other References:
Étienne-Jules Marey, Mouvement, 1895.