Depiction of photographers in movies/TV

[jtk]

I enjoyed the photographer in the original The Omen. As a result of this movie, I now blame all my light leaks on Satan.

I just wish I could take those great photos in dark environments with hand-held super-telephoto lenses like the Private Eyes in the movies.

Easy with digital.

 

[MattKing]

Easy with digital.

Yes, but that means you do have to be in league with Satan .

 

[jamesaz]

two f/stops out of how many?!

Out of however many there are. Or it could be just f2: not a lot of depth of focus. At any rate, not a movie to either avoid or go out of your way to see.

 

[George Mann]

Yes, but that means you do have to be in league with Satan .

Digital is a Satanic conspiracy!

 

[wyofilm]

I was thinking that "Blow Up" was about solving a crime!

Not solving a crime, but who can forget Greg Brady in the Brady Bunch showing that his high school team was robbed of a win? He was photographing a cheerleader (the sex part of photogs) and in the back ground of a enlarged photo was the wide receiver who was clearly out of bounds in the blown up photo. A true milestone in the history of important photography.

 

[Jeremy Mudd]

I can't believe no one mentioned this one:

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (the remake with Ben Stiller)

There's some liberties taken with film negatives, but its still fun to watch. Sean Penn is great in the roll of the Life Magazine photographer.

Jeremy

 

[Pieter12]

Just watched Kodachrome last night. Not too much about taking pictures, but it is about a photographer. A lot of shots of Ed Harris loading his Leica.

 

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

Reviving an old thread because I saw yesterday this amazing Slovak new wave film, The Sun in a Net [Slnko v sieti] (1963): https://www.imdb.com/fr/title/tt0176155/

Photography is not the central premise of the film, but it's there as a recurring motif. Basically, it's the story of disaffected post-war youth under a communist regime that's somewhat relaxing its grip, enough to have allowed this movie to be made.

The young man is a photographer who has an obsession with hands, and he's using a 35 mm SLR with a WLF, probably a Praktiflex. Whenever he takes a photo, the movie does a freeze-frame, and he comments in voiceover.

Vision and optics is another recurring motif: there's a solar eclipse at the beginning; the mother of the young woman that the photographer is on-and-off dating is blind; there are mirrors and windows aplenty, etc.

I can't stress enough how gorgeously framed is every shot. From the superb naturalistic lighting, to the amazing tonal composition, and the angles of view used, this is a movie made by people enamoured with photography. Its narrative is subtle and complex, and the elliptical dialogues require sustained attention, like a Hemingway or Carver short story.

In the end, the photographer is neither a hero nor a creep, he's mostly a flawed human like all of us.

You'll find it easily around the intertubes in streaming.

PS: If you want more of this era/style, have a look at Le chat dans le sac, 1964 NFB movie by Gilles Groulx, who channels both photography and the new wave in comparable ways.

 

[cliveh]

How about the film Lee, about Lee Miller played by Kate Winslet.

 

[snusmumriken]

I haven’t seen it, but what’s ‘Minamata’ (about Eugene Smith) like in terms of representing photographers?

 

[loccdor]

There's a 2005 anime called Speed Grapher and the main character is a photographer. It's pretty odd, story-wise. Lots of camera stuff in it though.

 

[Pieter12]

I just watched "Capote" (2005) with the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman. There is a scene where Richard Avedon comes to photograph the killers. Avedon is always rendered out-of-focus, but his camera is tack sharp. A Hasselblad. I don't think Avedon ever used a Hasselblad until much later in his career, he used Rolleiflex for medium format. Plus, when the photos are shown in the movie, they are full-frame with rebate but not square--mostly vertical, although they do have the Hasselblad notches on the edge of the rebate. I doubt even if he were to use a Hasselblad, he would be using a 6x4.5 back and turning the camera to the awkward position needed to shoot verticals. Bad marks for the Art Director and possibly even the Director for that sequence. A little bit of research turns up that Avedon did shoot the killers with a Rolleiflex 2.8E and the photos, square format, were published in LIFE magazine, I think. Also, the Hasselblad model featured in the film was not available at the time.

 

[Jim Peterson]

Not a photographer but a Lab Technician. One Hour Photo (2002) with Robin Williams. There is some lab technician footage. Pretty creepy role for the talented Robin Williams. He carries the movie.

 

[Tel]

One of the best depictions I’ve seen of a photographer is in Julia Murat’s Found Memories. A very realistic portrayal of the process and it makes you want to go out and shoot some pinhole photos.

Found Memories (2011) ⭐ 7.2 | Drama

1h 38m | Not Rated

www.imdb.com

 

[Ben 4]

What about Linda Hunt in Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously?

 

[Harry Callahan]

I just watched "Capote" (2005) with the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman. There is a scene where Richard Avedon comes to photograph the killers. Avedon is always rendered out-of-focus, but his camera is tack sharp. A Hasselblad. I don't think Avedon ever used a Hasselblad until much later in his career, he used Rolleiflex for medium format. Plus, when the photos are shown in the movie, they are full-frame with rebate but not square--mostly vertical, although they do have the Hasselblad notches on the edge of the rebate. I doubt even if he were to use a Hasselblad, he would be using a 6x4.5 back and turning the camera to the awkward position needed to shoot verticals. Bad marks for the Art Director and possibly even the Director for that sequence. A little bit of research turns up that Avedon did shoot the killers with a Rolleiflex 2.8E and the photos, square format, were published in LIFE magazine, I think. Also, the Hasselblad model featured in the film was not available at the time.

Such things happen in almost every film where analog photo or movie cameras appear. They are doing it wrong nearly all the time.
And of course the guy with the camera is bad and dangerous. There is a movie with Tom Hanks, maybe 10 years old, taking place in the 20s or 30s and Hanks either is a mafia-guy or a good guy - cannot remember - anyway he is hunted by a sociopathic killer. And the killer does use a camera to take a picture of his victims, after he shot them but before they die. The sociopathic killer wants to record the last breath of his victims.
He is using a Graflex i think and after he shot bullets into his victims he sets up the Graflex on a tripod and focuses on the groundglass. You see several times the blurred image on the groundglass getting sharper - and then click - he fires the shutter without putting a film holder onto the camera. He never has plate- or rollfilm-holders at hand, the groundglass always still is on the camera when he "takes" the picture.
Later in the movie he has the print in his hands, but he never puts film into his Graflex.

 

[Daniela]

List so far:

Blow-up (1966)
Peeping tom (1960)
Midnight Meat Train (2008)
Verblendet (1985 - episode of an east-german crime series)
Gandhi (1982)
Funny Face (1957)
The Crown (2016)
Killing Fields (1984)
Rear Window (1954/1988)
The Bang-Bang Club (2010)
The Bridges Of Madison County (1995)
Smoke (1995)
Pecker (1998)
Fur (2006)
Johnny Skidmarks (1998)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (2007)
J.A. Martin Photographer (1977)
Under Fire (1983)
Pisi Pisi (1975)
Princess (1969)
The Public Eye (1992)
Photographing fairies (1997)
Bettie Page Reveals All (2012)
The Animal
The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1963)
Monk With A Camera (2014)
The Man who Shot Tutankhamun (2017)
Roman Holiday (1953)
The Dark Valley (2014)
The Eloquent Nude (2007)
Salvador (1986)
Secrets and Lies (1996)
The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)
No Small Affair (1984)
The Omen (1976)
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)
Kodachrome (2017)
The Sun in a Net [Slnko v sieti] (1963)
Le chat dans le sac (1964)
Lee (2023)
Minamata (2020)
Speed Grapher (2005)
Capote (2005)
One Hour Photo (2002)
Found Memories (2011)
The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)

 

[pentaxuser]

Yes, but that means you do have to be in league with Satan .

True but you have to start somewhere to get into that big league above and Photrio is as good a place to start as any

pentaxuser

 

[AnselMortensen]

Such things happen in almost every film where analog photo or movie cameras appear. They are doing it wrong nearly all the time.
And of course the guy with the camera is bad and dangerous. There is a movie with Tom Hanks, maybe 10 years old, taking place in the 20s or 30s and Hanks either is a mafia-guy or a good guy - cannot remember - anyway he is hunted by a sociopathic killer. And the killer does use a camera to take a picture of his victims, after he shot them but before they die. The sociopathic killer wants to record the last breath of his victims.
He is using a Graflex i think and after he shot bullets into his victims he sets up the Graflex on a tripod and focuses on the groundglass. You see several times the blurred image on the groundglass getting sharper - and then click - he fires the shutter without putting a film holder onto the camera. He never has plate- or rollfilm-holders at hand, the groundglass always still is on the camera when he "takes" the picture.
Later in the movie he has the print in his hands, but he never puts film into his Graflex.

"The Road To Perdition", 2002.
Academy Award winner for Cinematography.
Beautifully filmed, a treat for the eyes...but a grim movie.

 

[snusmumriken]

Mr Jones. I haven't seen it yet, but it's on my list.

 

[CMoore]

"The Road To Perdition", 2002.
Academy Award winner for Cinematography.
Beautifully filmed, a treat for the eyes...but a grim movie.

Hooray For Hollywood..!!!
FINALLY........the "good guy" Tom Hanks........ lets his guard down and gets killed by the "bad guy" Jude Law.

Yeah, it was VERY Grim.
Hanks poor kid..............

 

[Harry Callahan]

"The Road To Perdition", 2002.
Academy Award winner for Cinematography.
Beautifully filmed, a treat for the eyes...but a grim movie.

Thank you, then this movie is older than i did remember - and it`s even more of a "scandal" Jude Law doesn`t put film in his Graflex. In 2002 this movie surely was shot on analog film - and the entire camera crew (and the director!) shooting this movie must have known that with an analog camera you only can get a picture if you put film into the camera - what Jude Law never does ( $%&$&/%&(/%"$§%&%/&/(&TR%&/%&/$&%/$%&§$&$%&/!!!!!!!).

- Re-adjusting my tie and my hairdo -

Hooray For Hollywood..!!!
FINALLY........the "good guy" Tom Hanks........ lets his guard down and gets killed by the "bad guy" Jude Law.

Yeah, it was VERY Grim.
Hanks poor kid..............

Fortunately Tom Hanks poor kid never will be shocked by a picture of his father in last breath - because Jude Law never puts film into his Graflex ( &/%&$%&"§$%&$§%(/&/$%$§%%§$&$§&/%&(%&$%!!!!!!! )...

 

[Harry Callahan]

... oh wait!

- re-adjusting tie and hairdo -

There actually is a scene where Jude Law indeed does put a film into a camera! In one scene he does put a new roll of 120 film into a folder. BUT:

It is night.
They are in a Diner in the middle of nowhere - and its probably the great depression. There is electric light in the diner but it`s unlikely that the owner of a in-the-middle-of-nowhere-diner-during-the-great-depression can afford a hell of light; meaning its pretty dark.
Jude Law does not have a flash gun.
Or a tripod.
Or a cable release - he just has a folder.
What was the highest film speed in the 20s or 30s? 100ISO, 50 ISO?

Jude cannot take this picture under these conditions - and he even doesn`t pay attention to the little red window on the folder, to check whether the film is properly spooled to the first frame!
HE is the sociopathic killer, HE wants last-breath-pictures, HE must make sure that the first picture he takes is successful - but He does not check the frame indicator when loading a new 120 roll film into his folder when He only has one try for the picture!
In a dark diner, without flash or tripod or cable release, having 100ISO at best with a medium format folder you have to stop down pretty much to get enough DOF - especially with an uncoated lens you should stop down even more to get clear pictures!

( &$%$§&/%&%&/§E/&(%%&(W$§$§&$%/$&§!!!!!!! )

 

[CMoore]

Thank you, then this movie is older than i did remember - and it`s even more of a "scandal" Jude Law doesn`t put film in his Graflex. In 2002 this movie surely was shot on analog film - and the entire camera crew (and the director!) shooting this movie must have known that with an analog camera you only can get a picture if you put film into the camera - what Jude Law never does ( $%&$&/%&(/%"$§%&%/&/(&TR%&/%&/$&%/$%&§$&$%&/!!!!!!!).

- Re-adjusting my tie and my hairdo -


Fortunately Tom Hanks poor kid never will be shocked by a picture of his father in last breath - because Jude Law never puts film into his Graflex ( &/%&$%&"§$%&$§%(/&/$%$§%%§$&$§&/%&(%&$%!!!!!!! )...

Picture..???
The kid does not give a zhit about a picture or if Jude were stuffing pancakes into a camera
You do not think the kid realizes that his father is now DEAD.?

 

[Harry Callahan]

My comment was meant to be rather funny than serious. Your remark about the kid just gave me another opportunity to point out that Jude Law does not put film into his Graflex.

I dislike movies of that kind anyway. I`m in for the happy ending. I sometimes crack jokes about such movies, because they are way to sinister for me.