October 2006
Many argue that photography and cinema have a close kinship. However, if there is a degree of kinship between the arts, it is the same for all. It is more fruitful to explore their differences than to easily ascertain their similarities, which anyway should not be sought in their common technical means.
Photography primarily describes, while cinema narrates. The narrative that a photograph may contain is an arbitrary result of the description of elements. That is, the narrative follows the description. In cinema, the narrative precedes the description. The elements that compose the latter frame the former.
Photography is enclosed within a moment of time, while cinema evolves over time. That is why photography speaks more substantively about time, since its mystery is enclosed and defined within the concentration of the photographic moment, while it spreads out in cinematic duration. There is a time of photography, but not a time of cinema, as it is confused with the time of life, which is also the time of narrative. Cinema is defined by duration and movement, while photography is defined by the absence of duration and stillness.
Photography moves in an abstract space, a poetic space, where words (or objects) are recognized but have neither a single meaning nor unique content, only countless extensions. Cinema moves in a specific and realistic environment, like that of stories and myths, where words (or images) take the specific meaning given to them by the other words (and images). Perhaps that's why Greece, a country of poets, seems to be more fertile in photography than in cinema.
The photographic aspect of cinema does not coincide with the individual frames. These exist only in a necessary relationship with each other. The preceding with the following and vice versa. The plasticity of cinematic frames is not organic, since none of them was born to be independent.
I tend to focus more on the biographies of directors rather than those of photographers. Possibly because the former live within the realism of their films and the latter in the mystery of their photographs. But is not realism the other side of mystery? Perhaps at this point, the similarities begin?
Plato Rivellis