Comics and Photography: Research Note 1
by Jeet Heer
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Eadweard Muybridge’s motion study of a galloping horse.
This is the first of a new series of blog posts I’m going to be starting up under the umbrella title “Research Notes.” These posts will be quick notes on ideas that could (and maybe should) be spun off into larger, more polished essays. But in the research note I’ll just jot down the preliminary notion. Since Comics Comics has a very smart and articulate readership, my hope is that the notes will spark suggestions for how the idea can be refined and developed.
So the first research note is for an essay on “Comics and photography”; the idea was sparked by Dan’s earlier comments on the new Rip Kirby book (and by a subsequent conversation Dan and I had). Some quick thoughts:
Comics and photography were both part of the proliferation of images that occurred in the 19th century, the explosion of the visual made possible by mechanical reproduction.
To what extent were late 19th and early 20th century cartoonists like A.B. Frost and Winsor McCay, who did so much to introduce sequential movement into comics, influenced by the motion studies of Eadweard Muybridge?
Winsor McCay’s motion study of a galloping bed.
Frank King was a lifelong shutterbug, at the vanguard of the first generation of middle-class Americans who used the camera to record family life. As Chris Ware and I have documented in the Walt and Skeezix series, photographs were a major source for King, who used family photos as a reference tool. Yet King only very rarely directly copied from photos; rather he used photos as a memory tool. And indeed, even King’s own photos seem somehow not to record so much a moment in time as a slightly-fuzzy memory of a moment. King’s photos are nostalgic and backward looking.
The Sickles/Caniff school is often linked to movies, and it’s true that Sickles and Caniff were great film buffs and absorbed much from the cinema of the 1930s and 1940s, not just classics like Citizen Kane but also B-movies with their slightly darkened sets. Caniff and Orson Welles had a mutually admiring correspondent. A fan letter to Caniff in the early 1940s smartly compared Terry and the Pirates to Casablanca. What hasn’t been investigated is the likely impact of magazine photos: the 1930s were the decade Life magazine took off as America’s leading photo-magazine. The use of photographs to record the news, particularly the darker corners of the Depression and the onset of the war, transformed the world’s visual imagination: Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange (who was friends with George Herriman by the way), George Strock, and many others. Caniff was paying attention.
Socially and politically he was very close to many people in the Time/Life staff, who tended to be smart, internationally minded college boys like himself. The Luce magazines often promoted Caniff’s work, since he did the comic strips that most closely resembled their own aesthetic and political outlook.
If Caniff came out of Life, the post-war Alex Raymond was affiliated with Vogue. Depression austerity and wartime rationing were over and Paris was in ruins, so the post-war years were the period when New York became the world’s fashion capital. The first Rip Kirby story involves a fashion model; and the whole ambience of the strip comes from the fashion world. Raymond’s drawings weren’t just done in a photorealist style; they were distilled fashion shots.
If King used photos to pull him back to the past, Raymond was interested in snapshots that caught the present, the sleek and shiny now rather than the blurry bygone days.
Like Caniff, Raymond often photographed models. But when Raymond reinvented his style with Rip Kirby he was able to take this use of models and photos an extra step because of a new invention: the Kodak instant camera. Photorealist comics depended on this new technology.
Even among naturalistic, literal-minded illustrators, not everyone was a fan of photography. Here is Burne Hogarth’s thought: “[Hal Foster] is one of the great geniuses of the comic strip….Other artists were fixated on photographs; this guy worked it out straight out from his eye outward. He solved problems that very few people ever did. I began to realize that because when I had to draw figures that were flying, I sat down and draw those things, for Christ’s sake. I couldn’t have models pose. Milt Caniff many times had model pose. Stan Drake had models pose. The point I’m making is that those guys used Polaroid cameras all the time.” (The Comics Journal, #166, p. 75).
The decline of photorealism as a comics style might have something to do with the parallel decline of magazine photojournalism. During the years when Life was supplanted by television, photorealism lost favour as a cartooning style.
In sum, it’s not just the case that some major cartoonists were influenced by photography. More complexly, as photography evolved, comics followed along; the two art forms developed in tandem.
Labels: Alex Raymond, Frank King, Heer notebook, Milt Caniff, photo-referencing, Winsor McCay
Hi, Jeet:
I've published an essay on the relation between comics and chronophotography in which I argue that the relation is essentially parodic — the rationalist underpinnings of the chronophotographic enterprise are turned upside down in comics that present ensuing chaos rather than carefully measured movement. Sammy Sneeze and AB Frost loom large…
It's called Comics and the Critique of Chronophotography, or ‘He Never Knew When It Was Coming!’, and it appeared here:
animation: an interdisciplinary journal (http://anm.sagepub.com) SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) Vol 1(1): 83–103
Unfortunately it's for subscribers, but I could send you a copy…
I would suggest that Marey was more important than Muybridge for depicting motion. Opper, for example, shows motion (in "Maud,' e.g.), with repeated images of the same figure (usually being twirled by Maud), only a little bit apart–very much like Marey.
Also, Outcault already, in The Yellow Kid, shows motion blur–for example in the early (1896) cat/monkey/rooster fight, and I'd guess that just comes from real motion blur in run-of-the-mill 19th c. photographs, blur which often was an unintended consequence of the long exposure times.
The thing about Muybridge is that he does what McCloud would call "moment to moment" sequences, and those are extremely rare before the 50s (even when Kurtzman does them in Mad, they are done as a parody–which I guess adds to Scott's point–of slo-mo cinematography.) Off the top of my head, I can only think of one example of "moment to moment" in McCay, and that's a bit iffy–the elephant coming toward the viewer. (It's iffy because that applies only to the elephant, while Nemo and the Princess in the foreground are having a dialogue from panel to panel).
(BTW–I am using here my own attempt to define "moment to moment," since McCloud is kind of vague about this (how long can a moment be before it stops being a moment?)–specifically, that the first panel shows character x performing action a, and the second panel shows character x continuing to perform action a. This, as opposed to "action to action," which is clearly meant to show action a in the first panel, and action b in the second panel.
Now, you can argue that the first panels in a Sammy Sneeze strip also show "moment to moment"–he is about to sneeze, and continues to be about to sneeze, but again that's iffy as other characters perform different actions. And the last three panels are always "action to action"–he is about to sneeze, he sneezes, he gets a kick in the ass.)
Marey is "more important" than Muybridge? What does this even mean, Andrei? Marta Braun's book Picturing Time spends oodles of energy disparaging Muybridge (for being more of an aesthete than a scientist), but they're both evidently, urgently, important — working in different but related directions. I would say that Muybridge has the more obvious influence on comics — there's a Punch cartoon parodying the Zoopraxiscope, for example, and I would claim Sammy Sneeze unequivocally. On the other hand, there's another Punch thing tracking three stages of a horse leaping a fence in a single image, which is pure Marey, and Steinlen seems to lean in all directions, including motion blur. The great Marey-image, for me, is in Polly and her Pals — the impenetrable line of gentlemen at the theater is Marey by way of Duchamp…
But I don't see the need to question Muybridge's relevance, ESPECIALLY around McCay.
I believe that Winsor McCay was much more influenced by the work of French animator Émile Cohl. I do recall reading somewhere, when researching Cohl, that "Little Nemo" was most likely influenced by Cohl's "Fantasmagorie," which dates from 1908. Likewise, Cohl had created animations which involved him drawing in realtime– white/chalk lines on black, which then metamorphosed into full animations of dream-like transformations, and free association not unlike that found in McCay. W.M.'s "Story of a Mosquito" and "Gertie the Dinosaur" must certainly owe something to Cohl's achievements.
Perhaps there was more of an influence, in the case of McCay, brought about by early cinema, and pre-cinema "toys" that utilized sequential photography? There are often discussions focused on the manner in which comics took a major turn toward co-opting cinematic devices much later, but I think a new conversation could be had focusing on the influence of early cinematic means on early cartooning.
Scott–
I should have made myself clear. Marey is more important *for comics* for depicting motion *inside a panel* (not from panel to panel). I was in no way addressing Marey or Muybridge in general, I was addressing the issue of the post.
as for Muybridge's relation to comics–why do you think the influence flowed in that direction, and not the other way around? Maybe he actually modeled the arrangement of his photographs on comics. I haven't looked at your article in a long time, so I will take a look at it again (if I can find it!), but for now I'm not all that convinced that McCay's work would have looked much different had he not known Muybridge.
R. (can I call you R?) — Cohl's film was the first to animate drawings, but it bears little relation to what McCay accomplished in his Nemo film. And he was playing with sequential movement well before Cohl made Fantasmagorie…
Andrei: (stealing from myself here)."It seems to me obvious … that despite the efforts to backdate the origin of comics, the medium does change fundamentally in the wake of Muybridge and his famed photographic arrays. Comics display a more evident interest in temporality, depicting precise moments arranged in a legible sequence, juggling a sense of both the instantaneous and the causal."
In other words, I don't think this is unique to McCay, but it isn't surprising that it's perhaps most pronounced in his work, given his movement towards animation…
Scott–yeah, I just found your article and skimmed it (no illos, though!) so I just read those lines twice. Ummm… I would have to have a much longer discussion with you to be convinced. On one hand, I can think of a lot of earlier counter-examples, and also I would like to know how well known Muybridge's work was when.
This is what I meant about Marey–
Marey
Opper
While y'all debate the front half of Jeet's argument, I'd like to disagree with the back end, that is to say–
The history I was always taught was that photorealistic illustration (and comics with them) became less interesting for magazines and their audiences as high-quality photographs became more and more cheaply printable, the idea being that if you could just print a really nice photograph in high resolution, there's no need to pay an artist to recreate that effect.
Is that not true?
What a great discussion, exactly what I was hoping to spark with my notes.
I'll let Scott and Andrei thrash out the Muybridge/Marey question, since they are both better informed than I am. I have to say though that Muybridge's influence on McCay (and others) seems undeniable. I deliberately choose the famouse walking bed sequence of Little Nemo because the bed's legs so clearly match the motions of a horse's leg, as recorded by Muybridge.
A.H.: the account you give of the decline of photorealism as a style is a familiar one and I'm sure it has a grain of truth to it. But as I tried to emphasize in my notes, there is another story as well: photography isn't a static art, no more than comics. As a certain type of photo-journalism fell out of flavor (witness the declining popularity of Life Magazine in the 1970s) so did photorealistic cartooning. It's a suggestive parallel.
What a great discussion, exactly what I was hoping to spark with my notes.
I'll let Scott and Andrei thrash out the Muybridge/Marey question, since they are both better informed than I am. I have to say though that Muybridge's influence on McCay (and others) seems undeniable. I deliberately choose the famouse walking bed sequence of Little Nemo because the bed's legs so clearly match the motions of a horse's leg, as recorded by Muybridge.
A.H.: the account you give of the decline of photorealism as a style is a familiar one and I'm sure it has a grain of truth to it. But as I tried to emphasize in my notes, there is another story as well: photography isn't a static art, no more than comics. As a certain type of photo-journalism fell out of flavor (witness the declining popularity of Life Magazine in the 1970s) so did photorealistic cartooning. It's a suggestive parallel.
I still think there is a larger discussion being missed here– the simultaneous development of "sequential movement" across a spectrum of media, with every component feeding into the other. Certainly a movement of thinking was afoot, and separating out a single medium or a single photographer, is ignoring that the entire endeavor to pursue this is shared by many. One cannot talk about Muybridge, without a consideration of the develpment of "optical toys" such as the Zoetrope, the Praxinoscope and the illusion of movement expressed through the sequential placement of static images. All of this pre-dated Muybridge and his attempt to answer the "galloping question." With that said, the development of these "proto-moving" images certainly lead to a new form for the expression of time and movement, which was eventually manifest in comics, animation and cinema. All of this was a push in that direction, a desire for a new time-based form.
Oh yeah, no question that chronophotography, film, and comics are all part of a larger concern with analyzing movement. Some of the impetus was coming from the sciences, but rather a lot was coming from scientific management and the desire to maximize the efficiency of workers' bodies….
On rereading these thoughts, I want to ask:
can you please distinguish or distance the connections you are trying to make here from the very well-worn arguments about "photo-referencing" which, while valid and interesting, seem to be not quite what you are getting at?
Ie, the comments about Raymond and the realistic school using models and photographs are not new news: there has been endless debate, including here at Comics Comics, about the necessity of photo-referencing vs. the deleterious effects of it on cartooning, from the craft perspective.
I go to school at SVA right now and the use of photo references (and life drawing) comes up constantly.
But it seems you are trying to get at something different and it would help to clarify that.
I'm not immensely knowledgeable about any of this, but animation, particularly in McCay's case, would seem to be the logical intersection of comics and sequential photography. Although most of his films have fanciful premises, the movements of people and animals feel accurate in a 'realist' vein. Perhaps they don't strictly apply to your inquiry since they postdate the bulk of his comics, but they seem insightful nonetheless.
I agree that the best way to look at all this is to see comics as part of a larger cluster of motion-recording art forms and technologies developing in the late 19th and early 20th century.
E.H.: I'm not sure what else I can add to clarify but I should make clear that these are just historical notes and not meant to be a guide for current artistic practise. Photo-referencing can be good or bad depending on what an artist does with it.
Regarding the animation/chronophotography question: Muybridge later re-animated his sequential photographs, using his Zoopraxiscope…
Hi, sorry, I should clarify–
it seems to me there are at least two questions or suggestions or relationships of comics and photography being put forth in this post, and it would help to distinguish these two questions or notions.
1) cartooning and photoreferencing– this is the discussion of Caniff vs. Foster (as quoted by Hogarth). This conversation, in my mind,has been extensively had elsewhere, including on this blog.
2) cartooning and the techniques of motion study photography, where the photographs are not referenced so much for what they have to say about a particular body in motion (ie, it's not that Winsor McCay is copying a Muybridge horse) but for techniques of how to depict motion.
There might even be a third relationship suggested here
3) in the discussion of Raymond and fashion photography, of an aesthetic sensibility towards modernism
E.H.: yeah, the distinctions you draw are right. I wasn't clear enough in my original post (partially because this is a set of notes, not a full-blown essay) but part of what interests me is the different ways cartoonists have related to photography, ranging from McCay being influenced by but not copying motion studies, to King's use of photos as a spur to nostalgia to Raymond's use of photo-refercing. So my notes weren't about one static thing but a changing relationship.