1 Week 1 Visual Culture in the Western World The Idea of Cinema -Fascination with images can be traced back to Plato (The Republic) in the parable of “The Cave” Plato raises the danger of being complacent with the illusion of the image The dangers of an uncritical understanding of the image -The period of Enlightenment: scientific studies and machinations are developed to “capture, project and record images. -17th century: Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680) developed the “catoptric lamp.” German-born Jesuit priest and scientist whose book Ars magna lucis et umbrae diagramed the outlines for his reflecting optic machine. Did not invent the “magic lantern” He projected and reflected images on the wall Encouraged scientific explanation to his spectators so as to demythify images as some sort of magic or ghostly apparition. He emphasised that these images were not magic, but “art.” The Magic Lantern—17th Century 2 1659—Christiaan Huygens develops the “lanterne magique” 1664—Thomas Walgensten developed a similar apparatus in Paris Unlike Kircher who used sunlight to reflect the image Huygens and Walgensten used an artificial light source Walgensten traveled through Europe with the “lanterne magique” (Lyons, Rome, and Copenhagen) The people who saw the lanterne magique were initially royalty in these cities By the end of the century the lantern shows were exhibited in more popular culture venues such as fairs and carnivals 18th and 19th CENTURIES 1740— X. Theodore Barber demonstrates the “Magick Lanthorn” in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. Venues such as private homes and coffee houses were the favored sites for these exhibitions. France, however, was where these lantern shows first gained commercial popularity at the beginning of the 19th century. 3 Etienne Gaspars Robertson “Fantasmagorie” capitalized on superstitions and religious fears Invoked the “spirits” of Rousseau and Voltaire It was a theater of apparitions. Unlike Kirhcer, Robertson did not tell his audiences that the “Fantasmagorie” was a technological spectacle Like contemporary theater and film, Robertson maintained the illusion of the image -It was an extremely complicated production to put on - images size and intensity of light had to be continuously managed The Fantasmagorie was internationally popular. Each traveling show was uniquely packaged usually attended by an adult urban middle-class audience. 1803—Barber presented the French Fantasmagoria in New York 1803—Showmen Bologna and Thomlinson exhibited the Fantasmagoria in London Americans saw the ghost of Benjamin Franklin and exotic figures like the “Egyptian Pygmy Doll” 4 There was sound with these presentations— ghost’s voices, music Ticket prices were approximately US$1. 1830 Photography and the Stereopticon The difference between t ...

1. 1
Week 1
Visual Culture in the Western World
The Idea of Cinema
-Fascination with images can be traced back to
Plato (The Republic) in the parable of “The Cave”
Plato raises the danger of being
complacent with the illusion of the image
The dangers of an uncritical
understanding of the image
-The period of Enlightenment:
scientific studies and machinations are developed
to “capture, project and record images.
-17th century:
Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680)
developed the “catoptric lamp.”
German-born Jesuit priest and scientist whose
book Ars magna lucis et umbrae diagramed the
outlines for his reflecting optic machine.
Did not invent the “magic lantern”
He projected and reflected images on the wall
Encouraged scientific explanation to his spectators

2. so as to demythify images as some sort of magic
or ghostly apparition.
He emphasised that these images were not magic,
but “art.”
The Magic Lantern—17th Century
2
1659—Christiaan Huygens develops the “lanterne
magique”
1664—Thomas Walgensten developed a similar
apparatus in Paris
Unlike Kircher who used sunlight to reflect the
image Huygens and Walgensten used an artificial
light source
Walgensten traveled through Europe with the
“lanterne magique” (Lyons, Rome, and
Copenhagen)
The people who saw the lanterne magique were
initially royalty in these cities
By the end of the century the lantern shows were
exhibited in more popular culture venues such as
fairs and carnivals

3. 18th and 19th CENTURIES
1740— X. Theodore Barber demonstrates the
“Magick Lanthorn” in Philadelphia, New York, and
Boston.
Venues such as private homes and coffee houses
were the favored sites for these exhibitions.
France, however, was where these lantern shows
first gained commercial popularity at the beginning
of the 19th century.
3
Etienne Gaspars Robertson
“Fantasmagorie” capitalized on superstitions and
religious fears
Invoked the “spirits” of Rousseau and Voltaire
It was a theater of apparitions.
Unlike Kirhcer, Robertson did not tell his audiences
that the “Fantasmagorie” was a technological
spectacle
Like contemporary theater and film, Robertson
maintained the illusion of the image

4. -It was an extremely complicated production to
put on - images size and intensity of light had to
be continuously managed
The Fantasmagorie was internationally popular.
Each traveling show was uniquely packaged
usually attended by an adult urban middle-class
audience.
1803—Barber presented the French Fantasmagoria
in New York
1803—Showmen Bologna and Thomlinson
exhibited the Fantasmagoria in London
Americans saw the ghost of Benjamin Franklin
and exotic figures like the “Egyptian Pygmy Doll”
4
There was sound with these presentations—
ghost’s voices, music
Ticket prices were approximately US$1.
1830
Photography and the Stereopticon
The difference between the image making of
photography and cinema is image projection.

5. But the cinema relied upon the technological
advancements of photography.
Two key Photographic Inventions:
Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1789-1851,
France)
The daguerrotypes—positive pictures that could
not be reproduced
William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877, England)
The talbotypes—first negative image on paper—
Images could be reproduced
The “realistic” recording of the image was said to
have a “mirror effect.”
For many, painting was declared dead at this
time (1840)
Photographic images are now used in the lantern
shows—slides are developed
5
1830 the stereoscope appears.
Created on the principles of binocular vision
(each eye sees differently)

6. The fusion of two images—side by side—
allowed for the different perceptions of the brain to
decode differences between objects in the image
giving an illusion of depth.
1851 Sir David Brewster (inventor of the
kaleidoscope) displays the Stereopticon at the
Crystal Palace Exhibition.
Huge commercial and international success;
marketed by the London Stereoscopic
Company.
There motto: “No home without a
stereoscope”
Entertainment or Science?
Science and art intersect with the mechanically
reproduced image in the 19th century
Because of its accuracy, the sciences were very
interested examining the body
It was thought that photographed images
revealed some sort of true self
Phrenologists, criminologists and psychologists
used photographed images to determine “normal”
bodies from “abnormal” bodies
6

7. Landscape photography was easily applied to the
sciences of land survey
Most successful were the images of wars—a
photographic document.
In the US, the Civil War (1861-1865) was the first
major war to be photographically documented.
An enormous demand was made for these views
or scenes of battles.
This notion of “being there” and “being
newsworthy” through the photographic image
begins here.
Lectures/magic lantern series also became very
popular during the War.
Travelogue lecture/lantern shows also
appear at this time
Lecture series were big business.
Most of the lecturers had agents who booked them
in high society venues where people heard about
far-off exotic places.
Churches also found these lectures useful for their
work (telling Biblical stories)
An important development:
Lecturers begin organize and juxtapose their
images in a continuous manner or subject.

8. 7
In this way, the lecturer would include shots with
coherent spatial relations
Introduced:
cut-ins
exterior/interior perspectives
point of view shots
shot/counter shot
During this time the spectator and the exhibitor
established their cultural relationship for the
arrangement of images in narratological sense
(See Alan Trachtenberg, Reading American
Photographs, 100-107).
1894—Alexander Black creates a fiction lecture
series where he put together a narrative through
an aesthetic of “seamless realism.”
His full length “picture play” was entitled, Miss
Jerry.
Movement
As early as 1848 Benjamin Pike’s Catalogue of
Optical Goods tells their patrons that their new
optical machines can “give motion effect to the
images”
Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904)

9. One of the first to successfully record movement
through a series of consecutive images
English born photographer who moved to the
American West in the 1860s
8
Extensive traveling for commissioned
lectures/lantern shows on his trips to San
Francisco, Yosemite Valley, Alaska, and Central
America
1872—approached by Leland Stanford who
wanted to prove that at one point in a horses
stride all four hoofs were off the ground.
He began work on this, but was briefly interrupted
by a murder trial—his.
He murdered his wife’s lover.
He lived in exile in Central America for two years.
In 1877 he resumed work.
He developed an elaborate electromagnetic
shutter that was triggered when the horse broke
a thread that was stretched across the track in its
path and the magnets were connected.

10. Muybridge showed that all four hoofs of the horse
were off the ground
1878-1879 Muybridge developed the
zoopraxiscope.
This device projected images on a constantly
turning glass wheel.
Between 1884 and 1885 Muybridge, while at the
University of Pennsylvania, took more than
9
200,000 images for scientific purposes - humans,
animals, movement.
In 1887 he published 20,000 of these images
in his Animal Locomotion.
The inventions for creating an “image-movement
machine” were a world-wide endeavor.
Etienne-Jules Marey
1830-1904, France
Marey started his career as an assistant surgeon in
1855, and specialized in human and animal
physiology.
In 1867 he became Professor of Natural

11. History.
Inventor of the "chronophotograph" (1887)
from which modern cinematography was
developed.
Whereas Muybridge (with whom Marey was
frequently in contact) had used a number of
cameras to study movement,
Marey used only one—the movements being
recorded on one photographic plate.
Like Muybridge, he studied the human in motion
The subjects wore black suits with metal strips or
white lines as they passed in front of
black backdrops.
10
(a chronophotograph project—Muybridge, Marey,
Eakins)
In America, Thomas Alva Edison was working on
a lot of different “inventions”
- moving images was but one.