Moving Stills by Belen Cerezo

The exposition 'Moving Stills' addressees the issue of still photographs that move, in other words, that contain movement through expounding and scrutinising the images that emerge from re-filming a still image. These images could be defined as still and moving image at the same time and here I will call them still-moving. This interrogation draws on the discursive notion of the rostrum camera — a film-making technique based on re-filming still images usually employed in animation and in documentary films and it is composed by a performance-lecture 'Moving Stills' and the artwork 'Moving Stills, Moving Stones'. The performance-lecture explores certain images that are still and also moving images. The first part of this performance-lecture reflects upon genealogies of the so-called still and so-called moving image. The second one brings to the fore the images that challenge this distinction and introduces the specific case of the ‘rostrum camera’. Finally, the last part presents three excerpts of documentary films in which the technique of the rostrum camera has been employed ‘to move’, in the sense of to set into motion, still images. The artwork 'Moving Stills, Moving Stones' is composed by two videos, one in a titled monitor on the floor and the other on a flat screen. The monitor shows a ‘sequence’ of a stone-lifting from the film Ama Lur, 1973, also included in the performance-lecture Moving Stills, that. Next, the flat tv displays a video that begins with the technique of the ‘rostrum camera’ applied on still photographs that depict hands (extended palms with outspread fingers, clenched fist…) and later these same images are activated through the tactic ‘performing documents’. The work draws an explicit parallel between lifting stones and the artistic endeavour ‘to move’ images and it acknowledges that the haptic is located between the so-called still and so-called moving image. This exposition is part of the submission for the PhD study "What is it ‘to move’ a photograph? Artistic tactics for destabilizing and transforming images".

In 1963 Agnès Varda made the film Salut les Cubains (Hi There Cubans) using 1,500 photographs out of the 4,000 photographs taken during a visit to Cuba. Varda had studied Photography and History of Art, but she found photographs problematic. She comments: ‘Photography seemed to me much too silent. It was a bit “be beautiful and keep silent”’ (5). It could be said that within her oeuvre, Varda has been confronting images’ muteness.

In this sequence, still photographs that depict the singer Benny Moré dancing and singing were re-filmed following the rhythm of a song. Varda suggests that to “re-film” still photographs means to add the proposition of looking at them according to certain duration, in other words, ‘to animate what is stationary through the life of the gaze’ (6).

Ishi no uta aka, ‘The Song of Stone’ is an experimental documentary film from 1963 made by Toshio Matsumoto. In this film, Matsumoto crops and dissects still photographs of a rock quarry near Aji on the island of Shikoku by professional photographer Y. Ernest Satow. Matsumoto comments that in this film he ‘started on purpose from a position that rejected the information value of the material. The subject is stones, right? Rocks don’t say a thing (7).’ Indeed, it could be said that stones are mute, still and stationary as still photographs, therefore considering stones as the subject-matter for a film seems provoking and contradictory.

Matsumoto goes on to explain that stonecutters in this rock quarry, while extracting and polishing their blocks of stone, used to say: ‘the rock is gradually coming to life’ (8). This struck him. Furthermore, he finds similarities between the stonecutters work and what making a film is about for him.

Moving Stills

The distinction between still images and moving images seems to be crystal clear: the still image is assigned to the field of photography, and the moving image to film. Still images are stationary and quiet, which implies that in still images the relations between two given points do not change over time, whereas in moving image, these relations do change. Indeed, following this definition, there don’t seem to be any other possibilities: images move, or they do not move’ (1).

Nevertheless, in spite of the plausibility and apparent naturalness of this distinction between still image and moving image, this is arguably problematic. In fact, various types of arguments undermine this dichotomy, these arguments refer, among other things, to the nature of certain images and to the complexities of the images’ reception, including that still images are always perceived in time (2).

Trying to include as many aspects of movement as possible in regard the still image, four categories could be established. Firstly, still images that reproduce movement of content or image carrier during exposure. Secondly, images that simulate movement through optical effects such as multiple exposure or photomontage. Thirdly, serial still images that appear to move when viewed by a mobile observer, or when manipulated by hand, for instance the case of the flipbooks. Finally, ‘moving image’ also includes still photographs that, lying on a movable table, are re-filmed with a camera. This camera is called the rostrum camera (3).

The rostrum camera is a film-making technique that makes use of a movable camera fastened above a movable table that pans slowly, zooms in or out, or the combination of both. It has been used extensively within animation and documentary filmmaking practices. In documentary filmmaking, the most conventional use of the technique of the rostrum camera is to show still photographs of events, places or people. In these cases, the still photographs tend to operate as documents to bear witness. Generally the movements of the rostrum camera over the photographs are accompanied by a voice-over. Therefore, it could be argued that in these documentary films the rostrum camera move to follow the narrated story.

Two influential figures in the history of the rostrum camera are Ken Morse and Ken Burns. Ken Morse is Britain’s premier rostrum cameraman and for many years, his work has played an important role in television documentaries. Ken Burns is a North American director of documentary films known for using archival footage and photographs. Burns comments that in 2003 Steve Jobs asked for his permission to use the term ‘Ken Burns Effect’ (4) for a zoom and pan feature on Apple’s video production software. The ‘Ken Burns Effect’ became a widely known feature in iPhoto and iMovie and could be defined as a digital simulation of the analogue image-capture technique of the rostrum table.

Ama Lur, Mother Land in Basque, is a film directed by Nestor Basterretxea and Fernando Larruquert in 1968. The film was shot over two years during Franco’s Dictatorship when the expression of Basque identity was prohibited. Within this context, the directors wanted to make a film of affirmation in order to counter the political and cultural lack of information. According to the directors, the main aim of this film was to show their country to its inhabitants. They comment that, above all, they tried to explore a new cinematographic language, taking the model of some traditional songs as the principle for Ama Lur’s surprising montage.

Stone-lifting (harri-jasotze) is a Basque rural sport which is a variant of weight-lifting, the stone-lifter lifts a stone using his own strength and without making the use of a tool or machine, weighted or not, from floor to shoulder. There are usually two stone-lifters competing in each event, taking turns in one or several attempts, to perform the greatest possible number of lifts. A lift is considered complete when the stone has been properly balanced on the shoulder. Although it is likely that stone-lifting is closely linked to rural farming activities, there are no significant documents that mention this either as a sport or an activity. This has led to the wry saying that harri-jasoketa is ‘the oldest sport with the shortest history’.

Although some villages retain traditional irregularly shaped stones, the main ones currently used have four regular shapes: spherical, cylindrical, cubic and parallelepiped. The stones are traditionally made of granite and their weight ranges normally from 100 kilos to 212 kilos.

In a recent interview the stone-lifter Iñaki Perurena, who lifted a record-breaking 315-kilo stone, explained how he learned stone-lifting even though he comes from an area where stone-lifting was not practised. Surprisingly, he comments that he learned to lift stones through looking at photographs (9).

Footnotes of the performance-lecture

1 Jens Schröter. 'Technologies Beyond the Still and the Moving Image: The Case of the Multiplex Hologram', History of Photography, vol. 35/no. 1, (2011), pp. 23-32.

2 ibid.

3 Ingrid Hözl,‘Moving Stills: Images That are no Longer Immobile’, Photographies, 3:1, 2010, p.99-108.

4 Ken Burns, ‘The Worst War Ever’, [online], Available at: http://www.motherjones.com/media/2007/08/worst-war-ever, (last accessed 18/07/2013)

5 Smith, A. , Agnès Varda, Manchester Univ Pr, 1998.

6 Jorge Oter, Formas de Inmovilidad en la Imagen cinematografica, Doctoral Thesis, Universidad del País Vasco, 2013.

7 Documentarists of Japan # 9, Matsumoto Toshio, [online], Available at: http://www.yidff.jp/docbox/9/box9-2-e.html(last accessed 18/06/2014)

8 ibid.

9 Inaki Perurena: ‘Ha habido positivos por nandrolona en el levantamiento de piedra’, [online], Available at: http://www.jotdown.es/2013/07/inaki-perurena-ha-habido-positivos-por-nandralona-en-el-levantamiento-de-piedra/, (last accessed 18/07/2013)

10 Jakob Hesler,‘Playing with Death. The Aesthetic of Gleaning in Agnes Varda’s Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse’, Telling Stories: Countering Narrative in Art, Theory and Film, Jane Tormey and Gillean Whitely (eds). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009, p. 194

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