BlackLab: Adventures in Still Pictures

Michelangelo Antonioni

Last year a couple of other photographers and I discussed a project where we’d each choose our favourite film director and shoot a series of images in their style. As is usual with these things the shooting part is yet to happen, but perhaps that’s just as well, as from the myriad directors we could have chosen there was a spate of squabbling (guilty) about who was going to appropriate Michelangelo Antonioni.

Antonioni’s spare plotting and dialogue,  graphic style, iconic use of colour and long takes appeal directly to the photographer. His preoccupation with existentialism, ennui and apparent moral ambiguity inherent in his works are themes that resonate with many makers of still images.

Virginia Wright Wexman summarizes his style in the following terms: “The camera is placed at a medium distance more often than close in, frequently moving slowly; the shots are permitted to extend uninterrupted by cutting. Thus each image is more complex, containing more information than it would in a style in which a smaller area is framed … In Antonioni’s work we must regard his images at length; he forces our full attention by continuing the shot long after others would cut away.”

Today’s film is the final nine minutes of ‘Zabriskie Point’, a segment so visually stunning that if you don’t like it you probably came across this page while looking for this weekends Lockpicking Championships in Cologne or you’re suffering from visual problems.