The Philosophy of Early Film & Photography
By LePrince/Shah
The Philosophy of Early Film & Photography
By LePrince/Shah
These books are not just how the machines work, but what they do to our souls.
On Art and Life
John Ruskin
£7.99 £7.59Ruskin tussles with the role of art in a world being transformed by industry. Not just useful historical context for pre-cinema history, but a spiritual guide, too.
How We Got to Now: Six Innovations that Made the Modern World
Steven Johnson
£10.99 £10.44A refreshing take on the opaque nature of invention and how it's the little things that can force the big changes in society.
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Walter Benjamin
£7.99 £7.59This is one of the earliest and most influential works of cultural theory to refer to (and explore) motion pictures. A short book which might lead people towards Benjamin's breathtaking Arcades Project.
Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography
Roland Barthes
£10.99 £10.44The philosopher, Roland Barthes, creates a beautiful mix of memoir, essay and meditation. I have many of his phrases bookmarked: '..at first photographic implements were related to techniques of cabinetmaking and the machinery of precision: cameras, in short, were clocks for seeing.'
About Looking
John Berger
£14.99 £14.24A revelatory book about reading images - particularly inspiring in a broad sense for researchers who are left with only the briefest of motion picture sequences, or the vaguest of still images with which to work. This will help you appreciate how much can still be learned from such material if you just look - really look.
Motion Studies: Time, Space and Eadweard Muybridge
Rebecca Solnit
£16.99 £16.14This is not a conventional film history, rather it is a hybrid of biography and cultural theory by the author of A Field Guide to Getting Lost, and Men Explain Things to Me.