The Great Art Of Light And Shadow: Archaeology of the Cinema available in Paperback
The Great Art Of Light And Shadow: Archaeology of the Cinema
- ISBN-10:
- 085989665X
- ISBN-13:
- 9780859896658
- Pub. Date:
- 09/01/2000
- Publisher:
- University of Exeter Press
- ISBN-10:
- 085989665X
- ISBN-13:
- 9780859896658
- Pub. Date:
- 09/01/2000
- Publisher:
- University of Exeter Press
The Great Art Of Light And Shadow: Archaeology of the Cinema
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780859896658 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Exeter Press |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2000 |
| Series: | Exeter Studies in Film History |
| Edition description: | 1 |
| Pages: | 572 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 9.17(h) x 1.40(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Great Art of Light and Shadow
Archaeology of the Cinema
By Laurent Mannoni, Richard Crangle
University of Exeter Press
Copyright © 1995 Editions NathanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-85989-665-8
CHAPTER 1
Dark Rooms and Magic Mirrors
The camera obscura, or how to capture the sun
In a room dimly lit by candles, a group of nobles, burghers, and common people take their places on some benches. The candles are blown out: all is blackness. Bright illuminated images, coloured and moving, flash onto a white sheet secured to the wall. A scene appears; the people murmur to each other, some recognizing the village, the town, and the horses which they recently left to come into this darkened room. They exclaim at the faithfulness of the image, at the movement of the little shadows, at the amazing perspective so coveted by painters. A dancing devil appears, sending terror through the room. A few wise souls, initiated into the mystery of the camera obscura, are amused by the fear which grips their credulous neighbours, who are already reaching for their purses to buy the indulgence of the magician.
A dark room, with an audience gazing at a white screen and awaiting the arrival of a moving illuminated image. If we imagine ourselves to be at any point between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, what a scene of anticipation this is! If we could film the changes in costumes, the increasing size of the room, the appearance of a large projector behind the audience, we would see in a few minutes—like a time-lapse film of a flower blooming—the progress of a long wait which lasted over half a millennium. The only devices our ancestors could use to entertain and frighten themselves with optical visions borrowed from everyday life or from the fantasies of the mind, at least until the arrival of the magic lantern in the seventeenth century, were a dark room ('camera obscura', in Latin) and some complicated tricks with mirrors.
The principle of the camera obscura is simple: if a small aperture is pierced in the wall or window shutter of a fully darkened room, the scene outside (or any other exterior object) will be projected into the interior of the room, on the wall opposite to the aperture. A screen formed by a piece of paper or a white sheet improves the image. If this screen is close to the aperture, the image is reduced in size but very sharp; if further away the image is larger, but also more blurred and less colourful. Either way, it is projected upside down, since the light rays from the highest and lowest points of the exterior scene, travelling in straight lines, cross as they pass through the aperture. The result is a double inversion of the image, both top to bottom and left to right. Leonardo da Vinci, in the sixteenth century, and the astronomer Johannes Kepler in 1604, drew a clear analogy between the human eye and the camera obscura. Our crystalline lens takes the place of the aperture, while the retina which lines the back wall of the eyeball is comparable to the screen mounted on the wall opposite the aperture (see Fig. 1).
The phenomenon of projection of light rays has been known since antiquity. The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC), among others, observed the passage of a beam of light through some kind of opening. He did not specify if this experiment was conducted in a dark room, and made no mention of the images which may have been visible. Aristotle remarked only that the projection of the sun's rays through a square, round or triangular aperture always produces a circular image. He could not explain this fact rationally. It was not until the seventeenth century that Francesco Maurolico, of Messina in Sicily, finally shed some light on this optical problem: compared to the size of the sun, the small aperture which Aristotle used was effectively a single point. The light rays passing through that point took the form of a cone of light, with the aperture at its summit and the sun at its base. As they left the other side of the aperture the rays spread to form a second, smaller, cone of light. This problem greatly intrigued the scholars of the early middle ages, as manuscripts from that period demonstrate.
Without awaiting the theoretical explanation of the phenomenon, several thirteenth-century astronomers and opticians created the true camera obscura, which captured images from the exterior inside a darkened room. The English friar Roger Bacon (1214–94) recounted Aristotle's experiment, without crediting him, in his work De Multiplicatione Specerium (On the Multiplication of Species) written in 1267, but he added one important element: the presence of a screen, a wall (paries) onto which the light rays were projected. Like his predecessors, Bacon noted that the opening through which the light rays passed did not need to be circular. This phenomenon was the basis of his theory, astonishing in its intuition, that light propagated by means of spherical waves. If the image projected through a square aperture was circular, it was simply because the light had resumed its natural spherical shape.
Roger Bacon is credited with an anonymous manuscript from the thirteenth century, found among the Latin holdings of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, which contains the first known description of an eclipse viewed in the camera obscura:
One day when the sun is in eclipse, would you desire to observe the whole eclipse, to know its starting point, its extent and duration, without damaging your eyes? Observe the passage of the sun's rays through any round hole, and watch with care the illuminated circle which the rays form on the surface onto which they fall ...
Even if this now seems obvious, this text does not state whether this marvellous experiment was conducted in a camera obscura. However, a contemporary and follower of Bacon, the English Franciscan monk John Pecham or Peckham (1228–91) of Canterbury, in a treatise on optics entitled Perspectiva Communis, did specify that the solar rays of the eclipse should be captured 'through any kind of aperture in a dark place'.
The camera obscura of the thirteenth century does not only appear to have been used for viewing eclipses. It allowed astronomers to avoid direct observation of the sun, which was dangerous for the eyes. The French scientist Guillaume de Saint-Cloud viewed an eclipse on 5 June 1285 without taking any optical precautions, and suffered a violent dazzling which lasted for several days. Wherever he looked, even with his eyelids closed, he saw a persistent bright disc. To observe the sun in safety, Saint-Cloud thereafter used the camera obscura, this time described quite explicitly:
Make a hole in the roof or the window of a closed house, directed towards that part of the sky where the eclipse will appear, of about the same size as the tap hole in a wine barrel. As the light of the sun enters by this hole, place at a distance of about twenty or thirty feet from the hole a flat object, for example a board, and you will see that the light rays form a circular image on the board even if the hole is angular.
The spectacle of everyday life
In Andrey Tarkovsky's 1966 film Audrey Roublev, set in fifteenth-century Russia, a character watches with surprise as an illuminated image forms on a blank wall in front of him. It represents a group of moving horsemen, but they are seen upside down. Tarkovsky then shows the closed shutters of the room: a small opening has allowed a shaft of light through to project the image onto the wall.
Although we know that scientists from the thirteenth century onwards observed the sun in a darkened room, we do not know if they sought at the same time to capture the outside world, whether that might be the road or countryside surrounding them, or the threatening horsemen bearing down upon them. 'What takes place in the street when the sun shines, as the Italian Gerolamo Cardano would later describe it, did not appear on the screen of the camera obscura until the start of the sixteenth century.
The use of the camera obscura for viewing exterior objects, and not just for astronomical studies, appears to have been mentioned first in the writings of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). Da Vinci did not, however, abandon Bacon's earlier use of it as a method of studying the sun without burning his eyes; he hoped to use the rays entering the aperture of the camera obscura to calculate the precise distance of the sun from the Earth. Without giving further details, he discussed 'illuminated objects' whose images 'penetrate through some small hole into a very dark habitation'. A sheet of white paper served as the screen:
These images if they proceed from a place that is lit by the sun will actually seem painted upon this paper, which should be very thin and seen in reverse; and the said hole should be made in a very thin sheet of iron.
To view the image by transparency from the reverse side of the screen was ingenious: in that way the true orientation of the image, laterally inverted at the aperture by the intersection of the light rays, was restored. But the scene or objects were still always projected upside down.
The first published graphical representation of projection of the sun through an aperture into a dark place is found in De Radio Astronomico et Geometrico ('On Astronomical and Geometrical Rays'), by the Dutch mathematician Reinerus Gemma-Frisius, published in 1545. On 24 January 1544 he observed a solar eclipse at Louvain from the safety of his camera obscura.
The principle and construction of the camera obscura did not change from the thirteenth century to the start of the sixteenth: the only variation was whether the aperture was formed in a wall or in a shutter. But between 1521 and 1550 an important modification was introduced: a biconvex lens (with both its surfaces rounded outwardly) was placed in the aperture, which greatly improved the quality of the image by concentrating the light rays. It was another Italian, Gerolamo Cardano, who disclosed this improvement in his book De Subtilitate ('On Subtleties'), printed at Nuremberg in 1550. From this time on, scenes in the street outside formed part of the repertoire of the camera obscura:
If it pleases you to view what takes place in the street when the sun shines, place a disc of glass in the window and, the window being closed, you will see images projected through the opening onto the wall opposite; but the colours will be dull. Therefore place a very white sheet of paper at the place onto which the images are projected.
The glass disc (orbem e vitro) might be assumed to be a biconvex lens. A French translation of De Subtilitate published in Paris in 1556 went so far as to use the description 'a round body made of glass' (la rotondité faicte du verre).
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the camera obscura was deprived of a great portion of its history by the erroneous attribution of its invention to the sixteenth-century Italian scientist Giovanni Battista della Porta (1540–1615). In fact, della Porta merely published a description of it, in a four-part book entitled Magiae Naturalis ('Natural Magic'), printed in Naples in 1558. This mistaken paternity is found repeated in supposedly authoritative works, such as the Leçons de Physique of Abbé Nollet (1743) and the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert (1753), among other sources.
Della Porta's book certainly enjoyed an immediate success. Republished several times, by the end of the seventeenth century it had been translated from its original Latin into Italian, English, German, and French. Hurriedly printed popular editions circulated in France at this period. This probably explains why the earlier works by Gemma-Frisius and Cardano came to be forgotten, particularly since della Porta carefully avoided referring to them.
Della Porta demonstrated quite an inclination for the marvellous. Magiae Naturalis is full of horrifying and repugnant recipes for 'creating a Mandragora', making a woman talk in her sleep, or transforming men into animals; we also learn the causes of the repulsion of an elephant when confronted with a sow, or the terror of the lion when it hears the crowing of a cockerel. It is hardly surprising that della Porta was accused of sorcery by Pope Paul V. He also indulged himself by issuing prophecies, some of which, by misfortune, came true.
Della Porta described the camera obscura in detail in the fourth book of the 1558 edition of Magiae Naturalis, which dealt with 'catoptric experiments' ('catoptrics' is the science of optical effects by reflection, especially at mirrors, as opposed to 'dioptrics', which deals with refraction effects, particularly through lenses). In the same account, without identifying it as such, della Porta noted the phenomenon of retinal persistence of vision. He advised the adjustment of the eyes to complete darkness—'you must stay a while, for the Images will not be seen presently'—before looking at the projected image:
For when men walk in the Sun, if they come into the dark, that affection continues, that we can see nothing, or very scantly; because the affection made by the light, is still in our eyes; and when that is gone by degrees, we see clearly in dark places.
A new edition of della Porta's text was published in Naples in 1589, this time in twenty sections rather than four. This edition presented a genuine innovation, in the idea of organizing a true optical show by means of the camera obscura.
How in a Chamber you may see Hunting, Battles of Enemies, and other delusions.
Now for a conclusion I will add that, than which nothing can be more pleasant for great men, and Scholars, and ingenious persons to behold; That in a dark Chamber by white sheets objected, one may see as clearly and perspicuously, as if they were before his eyes, Huntings, Banquets, Armies of Enemies, Plays, and all things else that one desireth. Let there be over against that Chamber, where you desire to represent these things, some spacious Plain, where the Sun can freely shine: Upon that you shall set Trees in Order, also Woods, Mountains, Rivers, and Animals, that are really so, or made by Art, of Wood, or some other matter. You must frame little children in them, as we use to bring them in when Comedies are Acted: and you must counterfeit Stags, Bores, Rhinocerets, Elephants, Lions, and what other creatures you please: Then by degrees they must appear, as coming out of their dens, upon the Plain: The Hunter he must come with his hunting Pole, Nets, Arrows, and other necessaries, that may represent hunting: Let there be Horns, Cornets, Trumpets sounded: those that are in the Chamber shall see Trees, Animals, Hunters Faces, and all the rest so plainly, that they cannot tell whether they be true or delusions. Swords drawn will glitter in at the hole, that they will make people almost afraid. I have often shewed this kind of Spectacle to my friends, who much admired it, and took pleasure to see such a deceit; and I could hardly by natural reasons, and reasons from the Opticks remove them from their opinion, when I had discovered the secret.
Della Porta's show foreshadowed the magic lantern projections of the following century. But comparing them from a present-day viewpoint, the Italian's camera obscura appears almost superior to the lantern, whose hand-painted glass slides could not offer the complete illusion of this scenic device. Della Porta's images, projected into the room by the crystal lenses and the mirror used since 1558, showed real actors, who moved in front of scenery to the sound of accompanying music.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Great Art of Light and Shadow by Laurent Mannoni, Richard Crangle. Copyright © 1995 Editions Nathan. Excerpted by permission of University of Exeter Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Part 1: The dreams of the eye: dark rooms and magic mirrors Light in the darkness The "Lantern of Fear" tours the world Part 2: Triumphant illusions: magie lumineuse in the country and the city "
Life and Motion"
The 18th-century lantern slide The phantasmagoria From panorama to daguerreotype Part 3: The pencil of nature"
: the pirouette of the dancer The " vital question" resolved? Great expectations The magic lantern - a sovereign and her subjects Part 4: Inscribing movement: the passage of Venus and the galloping horse Marey releases the dove The big wheel of little mirrors Edison and his " films through the keyhole"
The labourers of the eleventh hour Appendices: Museums displaying interesting items relating to the history of " pre-cinema" media Report of the scientists Jamin and Richer on the phantasmagorie of Robertson and the Phantasmaparastasie of Cli