Depiction of photographers in movies/TV

snusmumriken · Jan 4, 2025

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

Further to this, I have now watched the film. It’s a slow but moving film about Stalin’s Soviet Union and the Holodomor in Ukraine, but don’t watch it expecting it to be about photography or a photographer. The camera (a Barnack) appears just twice, very briefly.

pentaxuser · Jan 4, 2025

You might add the 1940 Hitchcock film "Foreign Correspondent" where a raft of press photographers take shots of the Dutch Prime Minister with what appear to be Speed Graphics except that one( the assassin" ) is taking a shot with gun hidden in his hand by a double dark slide also in his hand

The interesting points for me are 1. The authenticity angle i.e. would press photographers have been issued with U.S press cameras?
2. The well thought out scene of a gun hidden by a dark slide was a scene made possible by such large cameras and be ímpossible now or even in the 1960s onwards

The above was first brought to my attention by a former member AgX on another thread several years ago

Oh and its worth a watch as a film if you have never seen it

pentaxuser

jamesaz · Jan 12, 2025

A character in the movie “Putney Swope” by Robert Downey: Mark Focus. A photographer who wore a speed graphic on a strap around his neck. (Scene)Looking for work:
Focus: (showing his portfolio) I did this for G.M. This for IBM. This for CBS.
Swope: I know your work Focus, you’re the best in the business.
They begin negotiating. Eventually Focus says he’ll do it for nothing because “I need the work”

grahamp · Jan 13, 2025

I watched the movie pilot for the 'Ironside' TV series the other day. There's a scene with Ironside asking for his job back (in a restaurant with the Chief of Police) surrounded by a press pack. Everything from 4x5 press cameras to 35mm, and I think an 8mm cine camera. Bizarre. Must have cleaned out the props department!

Pieter12 · Jan 13, 2025

grahamp said:
I watched the movie pilot for the 'Ironside' TV series the other day. There's a scene with Ironside asking for his job back (in a restaurant with the Chief of Police) surrounded by a press pack. Everything from 4x5 press cameras to 35mm, and I think an 8mm cine camera. Bizarre. Must have cleaned out the props department!

Maybe it was a Bell & Howell 16mm. Newsrooms used those all the time before videotape.

grahamp · Jan 13, 2025

Looked like a Super 8 of some sort. Single lens, pistol grip, long on the axis of the lens, light in colour. That was what was odd - so many cameras that seemed in period but not suitable for the work/conditions. It was just strange (to me).

RezaLoghme · Friday at 1:30 AM

The wonderfully entertaining "TV Tropes" database has a very good page on how photographers are being portrayed in movies:

Camera Fiend - TV Tropes

Some characters who are reporters or photographers use a camera or video cam for work. As well, other characters have photography or filming as a beloved hobby. They'll have the camera gear with them everywhere they go and they'll use it often, …

tvtropes.org

nikos79 · Friday at 5:46 AM

Wim Wenders. He loves photography and one of his heroes was a photographer in a film - can't recall which

JensH · Friday at 8:48 AM

nikos79 said:
Wim Wenders. He loves photography and one of his heroes was a photographer in a film - can't recall which

Palermo Shooting!
German rock star Campino with a Makina 67.
Also a pano camera at the beginning of the film (Noblex?).

nikos79 · Friday at 10:39 AM

JensH said:
Palermo Shooting!
German rock star Campino with a Makina 67.
Also a pano camera at the beginning of the film (Noblex?).

Yes!!! Thanks

pentaxuser · Friday at 11:44 AM

UK TV is forever making the mistake of using safelight( always red) to indicate any and all kinds of film developing work

Recently I watched an episode of a 1950s/early 60s crime series where a film was being developed in a daylight tank under a red light.

Might it have been an ortho film?- possible but unlikely at that time. What made it worse however was they examined the film still under red light

pentaxuser

Kino · Friday at 12:33 PM

pentaxuser said:
UK TV is forever making the mistake of using safelight( always red) to indicate any and all kinds of film developing work

Recently I watched an episode of a 1950s/early 60s crime series where a film was being developed in a daylight tank under a red light.

Might it have been an ortho film?- possible but unlikely at that time. What made it worse however was they examined the film still under red light

pentaxuser

Red safe light has depicted darkroom work in motion pictures for many, many years. However, what the actors do under that light is a good indicator of the technical comprehension of the implied process by the image maker.

It is like when you hear a motor drive sound dubbed-in over the image of a clearly manual SLR in a program.

Those who know, laugh.

Ulrich Drolshagen · Friday at 3:29 PM

We Were Soldiers, 2002, didn't get mentioned yet.

Harry Callahan · Friday at 10:03 PM

pentaxuser said:
UK TV is forever making the mistake of using safelight( always red) to indicate any and all kinds of film developing work

Recently I watched an episode of a 1950s/early 60s crime series where a film was being developed in a daylight tank under a red light.

Might it have been an ortho film?- possible but unlikely at that time. What made it worse however was they examined the film still under red light

pentaxuser

Maybe they were using print film to make a copy of a negative, maybe to get some slides. If so it would make sense to work under red light and examine the film under red light, after development but before fixing to check if development was sufficient.

"The untouchables" also have a photographer, but he ain`t a main character of the film. He is there sometimes with a Graflex, but is handling the camera proper as far as i recall.

Oh and there also is a movie with Danny De Vito where he is playing a photographer in the 50s - he is developing his sheets in the trunk of his car (at night) to be the first who can sell his picture to the newspaper. But i cannot recall the title of the movie, maybe it`s already in this list here.

reddesert · 2025-07-26T01:00:49-0400

There is a darkroom scene in Louis Malle's "Ascenseur pour l'Echafaud" (Elevator to the Scaffold). However, I can't remember if you see the pictures actually being developed and printed under safelight, or if it only shows the characters entering the darkroom after the prints are made and the lights can be turned on. The photos are an important plot element but they're taken as snaps by major characters in the course of events, not by a "photographer" as in someone whose raison d'etre is photography. The movie is black and white so you wouldn't get to see the safelight color.

I'm not too bothered by red safelights in films or showing operations that you would normally do in total darkness. Movies aren't literal depictions, they create an impression to represent events (this underlies Eisenstein's theory of montage, for example). It does bother me more when they make factual howlers that are lazy. For ex, when Wes Anderson mocks up a camera that never existed, it's in service of the Wes Anderson world that isn't quite real, but if you were to see a press photographer with a modern SLR in a 1950s movie, it's just breaking the illusion unintentionally.

P.S. I forgot perhaps the most interesting part of the photo lab in "Ascenseur pour l'Echafaud" - it's at a roadside motel, and this is taken as perfectly normal. Did motels (in France anyway) often have photo labs so that travelers could drop off their snaps for quick turnaround? Who knows?

Taurabon · 2025-07-26T04:15:07-0400

"THE VILLAGE ALBUM" is a 2004 Japanese film.
It was supervised by a real photographer, so there is nothing strange about the way the photos were taken.

drkhalsa · 2025-07-26T23:32:01-0400

"Oh and there also is a movie with Danny De Vito where he is playing a photographer in the 50s - he is developing his sheets in the trunk of his car (at night) to be the first who can sell his picture to the newspaper. But i cannot recall the title of the movie, maybe it`s already in this list here."

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Depiction of photographers in movies/TV

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