Rene Gardies, "Le Cinema Est-il Surrealiste?"
Now the cinema is, quite naturally, the privileged instrument for de-realising the world. It’s technical resources…allied with its photo-magic, provide the alchemical tools for transforming reality”
Rene Gardies, 1968
Ballet Mechanique by Fernand Leger and Dudley Murphy
“One day a tall young man appeared...and introduced himself as a cameraman from Hollywood.
...Dudley Murphy said some very flattering things about my work and suggested we do a film together. He
had all the professional material, he said; with my ideas and his technique something new could be
produced, We became quite friendly, spent a few days together discussing subject matter — I insisted on
my Dada approach if we were to work together, to which he readily agreed after I had explained it at some
length.”
Man Ray, Self Portrait (1963)
“One day when I was visiting Ezra Pound...he told me that a friend of his, Fernand Léger, wanted to
make a movie. Also George Antheil, the young protégé of Stravinsky would like to make a movie. So he
brought the three of us together and we decided to make one. ...[The basic concept was] a belief that
surprise of image and rhythm would make a pure film without drawing on any of the other arts, such as
writing, acting, painting. ...So Léger and I financed our film equally, with the understanding that he
would have the European rights of the finished film and I would have the American rights. ...We talked
over ideas and I set out with my camera and the film, executing the ideas we had talked over and
photographing things that stimulated my imagination around Paris.”
Dudley Murphy, “Murphy by Murphy” (unpublished memoir, 1966)
KIPHO 1925 (Guido Seeber)
This was a promotional film for the 1925 cinema and photo exhibition in Berlin. Directed by Julius Pinschewer with cinematography by Guido Seeber.
Sears 35mm f3.5 wide-angle lens for SL 11 and T.L.S. Cameras
I have a bizarre obsession with Sears M42-mount lenses. I’ve been collecting them for the past 5 years and recently found a very special Sears lens - the 35mm f3.5! My copy arrived with the original box, soft case, caps and paperwork. I scanned the paperwork describing the info and specs about this amazing lens in case anyone is interested.
. . . Those commonplace and merely 'beautiful' pictures, which thrive mainly thanks to the charms of some actual object, are thrust into the background in favor of experiments and fresh solutions. Adventures into the realm of optics are still for the most part unpopular. But only that photography which enlists the help of the experimental will be able to lay bare al the technical and creative possibilities that are proper to the formation of the visual experience of our times.
— Otto Steinert, 1951