Introduction
Introduction, by Éric Thouvenel
In silver gelatin film practices, the film stock is not only a base on which images are indiscriminately set down, but also a material through which aesthetic practices and choices are invented.
With the “digital revolution,” the drastic reduction in the production of film stock obliged some filmmakers to rediscover artisanal practices for producing emulsions and to test their limits and explore their potential. By returning to the basic principles of photochemistry, questions around the sensitivity and expressiveness of silver gelatin images returned to the forefront, alongside a number of interventions ranging from sensitometry to making exhibition prints.
Nevertheless, this attention paid to the specific properties of the film stock predates the present-day situation. Back in the early 1920s filmmakers appropriated techniques for producing images not through recording but by putting objects into direct contact with the base. Man Ray, with his rayographs, opened the door to a number of experiments, from work on film prints in the darkroom to work done directly on the film stock, in particular by scratching the emulsion.
Finally, working on the film stock made possible the emergence of forms in which the film, independently of camera footage, is seen as a compositional element in its own right, within which the images can once again be fragmented and combined. Examples of this are practices which treat the film as something akin to a mosaic or a stained-glass window, in which every photogram becomes the site of an endeavour to conceive of the filmic complex in original ways.
Through their artisanal modes of creation, these films bring out some of the technological issues related to their fabrication, adopting an aesthetic which highlights or problematizes the technical tools used by filmmakers and the gestures by which they proceed and which distinguishes them.
