Fry up breakfast

The Influence of Movies on my Work – By Nik Stanbridge

I saw Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up the other day for the umpteenth time and while it is a film that when I first saw it I did get excited about being a photographer, it didn’t actually influence my photography (I’ve never wanted to be a fashion photographer). Seeing it again though got me thinking about films that I’ve seen over the years who’s look and feel have influenced my photography.

I was also inspired by this recent 35MMC post on “1950s Motion Picture Aesthetics” that talked about film-derived photographic inspiration and influences. And I’ve already written about my other conscious and unconscious influences here.

The two movies that immediately came to mind when I started thinking about my filmic influences were Alphaville by Jean-Luc Goddard (1965), and La Jetee by Chris Marker (1962). There are others, but these are the ones that have most impacted how my photographs look.

Cloud
Cloud, France (Olympus OM-1, Kodak T-MAX 400)

Alphaville

I could have cited other (several in fact) Godard films as influences (A Bout de Souffle for example) but Alphaville, shot in high-contrast monochrome, really sticks out. It’s not just the visual imagery, but also about how the frames actually look.

A lot of the movie is shot at night and the whole thing is quite rough. As with a lot of Godard movies of this period, there are no sets or sound stages… it’s all shot live on the streets of Paris despite the story being sci-fi and intergalactic in nature. The scenes are filmed in what was considered modern and futuristic in Paris in 1965.

Godard instructed his cinematographer, Raoul Coutard, to (a) only shoot with available light and (b) use a new, fast, Ilford stock (HPS) that was not mainstream for use in movie-making. Despite push processing, many parts of the shoot had to be redone as the reels came back just plain black. The norm back then was to use lots of lights when shooting night scenes in monochrome – not what Godard wanted. And the resulting high contrast images – what we sort of take for granted with our modern day fast stocks – were hard-won shooting with available light at night back in 1965. Relying on available light was a key factor in driving mood and atmos in the movie. Despite this, there were apparently 2,000m of ‘unusable’ footage but the costs and impracticality of reshooting meant that some of it had to be used (and it shows).

Man at night in a phone booth
Mark, phone booth (Olympus OM-1, Kodak Tri-X)

The central character, Lemmy Caution, played by Eddie Constantine, is a government agent sent across time and space to Alphaville, a mysterious technological supercity. Part of his role involves taking photographs with his Agfa Iso Rapid IF point-and-shoot that was launched in the same year as the film.

Rooftop skyline
Barry skyline, Wales (Olympus OM-1, Kodak T-Max 400)

The visuals are all about contrast and the extremes of light and dark, and looking back at it now it still looks modern, sumptuous and rich. The impact on me was quite liberating. It helped me to shoot more and worry less about the results; and relish taking photographs of the ordinary and mundane. I also started to experiment more in the darkroom with harder, higher contrast papers to convey mood and atmosphere.

Man shaving
Mark shaving 1 (Olympus OM-1, Kodak Tri-X)

Man washing his face
Mark shaving 2 (Olympus OM-1, Kodak Tri-X)

La Jetee

Have you ever tried to tell a story with a series of your photographs? As in, with lots of them, to deliver a narrative of some sort? Maybe in a photobook. Did you find it difficult? Imagine creating a 28 minute movie from still images. That’s what La Jeteee is – a movie created by Chris Marker using just still images; a voice-over narrative; and a score (I don’t think it’s a spoiler to share that it does actually have a tiny ‘moving image’ sequence). I’ve seen it a million times and it still inspires and engages.

In the opening credits thew film is billed as a “photo-roman” and that tells you, essentially, that it’s a photobook. In essence, it’s a time-travel story that plays with notions of time itself. Each still is a scene and a frozen moment of time – that’s the nature of photography of course, and one of the reasons for the use of stills in the film. In the film though, the frozen moments transport us forwards and backwards in time, and as such, it’s largely a film about memory. If this sounds a bit confusing, watch the film!

Roses in a vase, moving
Roses (Olympus OM-1, Ilford FP4)

Incidentally, the photographs used in the film were taken on a prototype Pentax Spotmatic (not launched until 1964, two years later) imported from Hong Kong by Marker’s sound engineer and collaborator, Antoine Bonfanti.

The drama and the characters in La Jetee could be transposed to the hidden, flirtatious lovers in Blow Up. They have that terrified “we’re in this together, we’ve been discovered, we’re fucked… but we’re in love” look about them. So sad.

Out of focus man in front of a concrete building
Alex (Olympus OM-1, Kodak Tri-X)

Again, high contrast, high grain monochrome. Close ups. A strong Xeroxed-image feel. Dirty. Grubby. Third World War despair and survival. Food, medicine and energy only available through time travel. Bewilderment of the future. I loved it and wanted my photography to reflect these ideas and thoughts.

Fry up breakfast
Fry up, Manchester (Nikon L35AF, Ilford Pan 400, 60 min stand dev in Rodinal 1:100)

Colemans's mustard tin and some toast
Coleman’s mustard and toast, Manchester (Nikon L35AF, Ilford Pan 400, 60 min stand dev in Rodinal 1:100)

Other movie influences

Another movie influence is Radio On (1979). I loved the atmosphere and locations of this black and white Chris Petit film so much that on a trip to Bristol, I sought out the Grosvenor Hotel and nearby flyover location that featured in it.

Grosvenor Hotel, Bristol, 1983
Grosvenor Hotel, Bristol (Olympus OM-1, 50/1.8, Ilford FP4)

I could also cite Alice in the Cities (Wim Wenders, 1974), Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929), Hiroshima Mon Amour (Alan Resnais, 1959)… all black and white films that I often think about when I think about my work. And they are all films, along with the ones above, that I often revisit to recharge my creative batteries.

If you shoot black and white I urge you to see one or more of these films and see if you too are touched and influenced by them in some shape or form.

I’m on Instagram here, and my website can be found here.

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14 thoughts on “The Influence of Movies on my Work – By Nik Stanbridge”

  1. How could you not mention the gorgeous Anna Karina? Incidentally, the film stock was HPS (sic).
    If you are not familiar with it, may I recommend Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Le Doulos”, shot in glorious B/W, and with a gritty storyline.

    1. Anna Karina is indeed a critical and integral element of the amazingness of the film. And thanks for the correction on the film stock. I’m remiss in not having seen that Melville film – I’ll check it out.

  2. I believe the Terry Gilliam movie 12 Monkeys was somewhat inspired and based on La Jetee. I am a fan of certain directors and films but the influence is more the emotion that is evoked through the visual scene and sometimes the soundtrack. This is more the way cinema influences my personal work. The difficulty in stills is creating an emotional moment without surrounding frames giving support. One of my favorite movie directors is William Wyler. Many of his films have strong character development yet are set in minimal or singular sets with precise dialog. How do I make a strong statement but contained in a single frame with no dialog? I have to find a way for the viewer to create the dialog from their own life experiences. Every image doesn’t speak to everyone in the same manner. Just as a director has a style so must a stills shooter find a way of speaking but without words.

    1. Thanks Bill. And that’s a very good point – about emotion. I think that the reason I picked these two particular films is because of that emotional pull and engagement. But I do agree that the style is central to how we as photographers actually convey meaning and emotion in our work – while staying true to ourselves. I may or may not be unusual here, but I never post anything online (e.g. Instagram) unless I’m emotionally charged by it – on the basis that unless I am I can’t possibly expect anyone else to be 🙂

  3. Enjoyed the post. Looking at your images, Bait (Mark Jenkin, 2019) also came to mind. If you haven’t already, it’s worth a watch (or two).

  4. Thanks for the insightful article and mention of one of my all-time fav photographer films. The first time was when it was shown by my Media Studies prof in university in 1977. I think over the years, I’ve watched it at least a dozen times.

    But there’s a typo. The filmaker’s name is Antonioni not Antonio.

  5. Love it! I have bookmarked this article so that I can find the films you mention. (Can any of them be found on Netflix or Amazon Prime?) Thank you.

    1. Thanks Gary!

      Alphaville is on BFI Player
      La Jetee is on You Tube
      Radio On is on Apple TV
      Alice in the Cities is on Prime
      Man With a Movie Camera is on Prime
      Hiroshima Mon Amour is on Prime

  6. Nik, great article with some wonderful pictures that you have been able to do it. Funny you mention Godard, the only two movies I had seen was Est Femme Est une Femme and Nouvelle Vague; I was never ready for his concepts, but I also feel that those movies are like classic books, they were made for you to watch through time, always learning new things. I would be very interested if could share or elaborate on your printing processes— I assume the paper used has as much impact as the film stock.Just an additional information to the readers, I find YouTube rent/buy feature really useful, as they have an extensive catalog that you don’t need to subscribe and it is always there unlike Netflix; despite lower quality the price is reasonable.

    1. Thanks for the kind words Ian.

      Yes, Godard did get quite political and some of those films are quite a hard watch. An easy and exhilarating Godard is A Bout de Souffle with Belmondo and Seberg. Wonderful.

      And as regards the ‘printing’, I have to admit to being a lapsed darkroom operator. I tried wet printing again during the pandemic but had forgotten just how difficult it was to get high quality results – those that I’m now getting through Lightroom. So I abandoned it. That said, unless I’m going for the Moriyama look (for which I have a few self-created presets), I try and do as little as possible. It is after all one of the reasons I went back to film – to have the film/dev combination largely determine my ‘look’. Sorry to disappoint on that front 🙁

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