Photography and Cinema

Is a DVD freeze-frame a photo? Is a video clip that’s shot on a digital camera a movie? Until now, few scholars have comprehensively examined the complex intersection between photography and film. With Photography and Cinema,David Campany offers an incisive study of how the overlap between the two media is forging new territory in visual studies.

The book draws on a fascinating selection of artists and works—including Alfred Hitchcock, The Matrix, Edward Weston, Bladerunner, and Leni Riefenstahl—to unearth the rich and sustained dynamic dialogue between the two mediums. Campany contends that photography and cinema have constantly borrowed from each other in numerous ways, and he examines such issues as photo essays and photo novels in print, the photographer as a filmmaker, photographic and filmic stillness, and photographers on screen. Understanding this little-known history is crucial to making sense of the ever closer relationship between the two in the future.

A richly illustrated and intriguing study, Photography and Cinema is essential reading for all scholars of visual studies.