Movement

What occurs within an image to give the illusion of movement of people or objects, when, obviously, neither people nor frames actually move?

1. Suspended Movement/ Stilled Motion

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Single images that freeze the action of movement by capturing a moment of it in a 'split-second' of time

Jean-Honore Fragonard  The Swing 1767  

Gjon Mili

Jacques Henri Lartigue Grand Prix of the Automobile Club of France 1911

Nicholas Laham, Rugby Action

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  Barbara Morgan, Martha Graham 1940

Lois Greenfield

Slow Shutter Speed

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This photograph of a running stream was created using a slow shutter speed because of the cloudy effect of the moving water.

John Sexton Merced River and Forest, Yosemite Valley, California 1983

Paul Caponigro, Conty Wicklow, Ireland

Ed Kashi Saigon On Wheels  

John Goodman Two Wrestlers, Havana, Cuba, 2000

Decisive Movement

Photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson used his understanding of impending change to formulate a theory
of photography he called "decisive moment." A pioneer in the use of the 35-mm camera, he caught
images at the moment of greatest impact, creating photographs that are charged with possibilities.

2. Summarized Movement

Single images that summarize a sequence of events in one frame where we see a progression of events or different stages of a story in the same picture:

as in the concept of a journey in John Ogilby's 17th century maps;

the narrative of the Norman Conquest in the Bayeux Tapestry

3. Simulated Movement

Single Images that evoke movement by showing the progress of the action  

• In film and animation, a series of still pictures are shown in rapid succession in order to simulate movement. 

• On the static page there is no way to simulate actual movement. 

• The most that can be done is to use techniques that convey a sense of movement, and rely upon the reader's imagination to perceive those techniques as actual movement.

• The most common technique is the use of lines to indicate movement.

• Thin lines drawn behind an object or character indicate the direction and speed of movement.  

• Blurred edges of the forms in a picture can simulate the act of motion. 

• It is generally the case that the more blurred the image the faster the speed depicted.

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Another technique for evoking movement is to show a single figure in a superimposed sequence of movements. These are often often represented in the two extreme positions, and the intermediaries, of a particular movement.

Subjects can be photographed in selected positions across their path of movement, and their resultant multiple exposures on a single print can convey movement. 

Étienne-Jules Marey

Widely considered to be a pioneer of both photography and of cinema.

Marey, a physiologist, spent his lifetime studying the dynamics of movement in its multiple forms. Both animal and human motions fascinated him. To study and measure subtle phenomena that were often imperceptible to the human eye, he used “chronophotography,” a photographic technique that was a precursor to the “moving pictures” of today’s cinema.

Chronophotography was to record several phases of movement in one surface.

His work had a profound influence on modern art expressions such as in the work of Ballà, the Italian Futurist concerned with movement,

Giacomo Balla Girl Running on a Balcony 1912, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash 1912

In their Manifesto of 1910 the Futurist painters asserted that:

The gesture which we would reproduce on canvas shall no longer be a fixed moment in universal dynamism. It shall simply be the dynamic sensation itself. Indeed, all things move, all things run, all things are rapidly changing. A profile is never motionless before our eyes, but it constantly appears and disappears. On account of the persistency of an image upon the retina, moving objects constantly multiply themselves; their form changes like rapid vibrations, in their mad career.  

Umberto Boccioni Unique forms of Continuity in Space 1913

His work is also credited with serving as the point of departure for Marcel Duchamp’s famous painting “The Nude Descending the Staircase.”

Marcel Duchamp Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2  1911

During the 1860s Marey threw himself into the study of flight, first of insects and then birds. His aim was to understand how a wing interacted with the air to cause the animal to move.

In 1890 he published a substantial volume entitled Le Vol des Oiseaux (“The Flight of Birds”) richly illustrated with photographs, drawings, and diagrams.

He also created stunningly precise sculptures of various flying birds.

He also devised some ingenious apparatus based on his graphical method, such as a corset which allowed a bird to fly around a circular track while recording the movements of its thorax and wings.

Deemed to be one of the first theoreticians of aeronautics. He was attracted by invisible phenomena concerning air currents and the resistance of air in the flight of birds. His last experiments were concerned with the observation and instant photographic recordings of smoke currents. He created a “smoke machine” that was one of the first modern aerodynamic wind tunnels, later adopted by Gustave Eiffel, and still used today.

Marey photographed the diverse forms assumed by wisps of smoke projected through obstacles in his wind tunnels.

Ballistic Photography

Gjon Mili

Working with Harold Eugene Edgerton of MIT, Gjon Mili was a pioneer in the use of stroboscopic instruments to capture a sequence of actions in one photograph. Trained as an engineer and self-taught in photography, Gjon Mili was one of the first to use electronic flash and stroboscopic light to create photographs that had more than scientific interest.  Many of his notable images revealed the beautiful intricacy and graceful flow of movement too rapid or complex for the naked eye to discern. In the mid-1940s he was an assistant to the photographer Edward Weston.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gjon_Mili

   Gjon Mili

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