The Naked Eye

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Movie
Original title The Naked Eye
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1956
length 71 minutes
Rod
Director Louis Clyde Stoumen
script Louis Clyde Stoumen
production Louis Clyde Stoumen
music Elmer Bernstein
camera Louis Clyde Stoumen
for Eye Pictures, Inc.
cut Louis Clyde Stoumen
occupation

The Naked Eye is a US documentary by Louis Clyde Stoumen in 1956. Stoumen presented his film the words above: A film about the fun and the art of photography ( a film about the fun and art of photography ). The Naked Eye received an Oscar nomination .

Portrait photography around 1893

action

Louis Clyde Stoumen's documentation on the art and history of photography opens with a quote from the book Kohelet : “The light is truly sweet, and it is beautiful for the eyes to see the sun.” It is then illustrated with many examples in an outline the technical development of photography from Louis Daguerre's beginnings in 1835 to 1956. In the first part of the film, Stoumen directs his gaze in narrative sequences on the most important artists of the profession, above all Alfred Eisenstaedt and Weegee . Eisenstaedt's predilection for available light photography is discussed, and he was one of the pioneers alongside Erich Salomon .

In the second half of the film, Stoumen largely focuses on the photographer Edward Weston and his life's work. The work of his sons Brett and Cole are also shown. Various works by Edward Weston are shown, which reproduce details with great depth of field and in fine light-dark gradations, such as sand dunes, a shell, dead driftwood or a bell pepper stylized as an object of art. Brett Weston's favorite subject for a while was the east coast of America, which the film also deals with.

In addition to traditional recordings, Stoumen, who taught film art at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and made still images possible with a new technique, so-called "photographic animation", also includes these in his film.

Photos of the following other photographers are shown and discussed:

  • Margaret Bourke-White , American photo reporter and first war correspondent for the US Army and photographer for the US Air Force towards the end of World War II.
  • Ansel Adams , American photographer and teacher of fine art photography. He was best known for his landscape and nature photographs from the national parks, national monuments and the wilderness areas in the western United States.
  • William Henry Jackson , American photographer, best known for his photos of the American West.
  • Alfred Stieglitz , American photographer, gallery owner and patron. Stieglitz presented many of the most outstanding photographs of his time.
  • Mathew B. Brady , American photographer, civil war chronicler and one of the earliest photographic war correspondents.
  • Nadar , French photographer, often portraits; His long-term exposures in the Paris catacombs and sewers also became famous .
  • Paul Strand , American photographer, commercial photographer: captured the negative aspects of modern industrial civilization with his photographs.
  • Harold E. Edgerton , American electrical engineer and pioneer of high-speed photography, best known for his photographs of projectiles , drops of liquid and atomic bombs .
  • Edward Steichen , American photographer known as the patriarch of photography. His The Pond-Moonlight (1904) was briefly the most expensive photograph in the world in 2006/7 with a sales price of almost € 2.5 million.

production

The film's preservation is funded by the Film Foundation.

Awards

1957 was Louis Clyde Stoumen with The Naked Eye in the category "Best Documentary" for an Oscar nomination, but was opposite Jacques-Yves Cousteau's underwater film The Silent World not prevail.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Naked Eye (1956) at cinema.ucla.edu. Retrieved February 7, 2014.