The Image in Early Cinema: Form and Material

In The Image in Early Cinema, the contributors examine intersections between early cinematic form, technology, theory, practice, and broader modes of visual culture. They argue that early cinema emerged within a visual culture composed of a variety of traditions in art, science, education, and image making. Even as methods of motion picture production and distribution materialized, they drew from and challenged practices and conventions in other mediums. This rich visual culture produced a complicated, overlapping network of image-making traditions, innovations, and borrowing among painting, tableaux vivants, photography, and other pictorial and projection practices. Using a variety of concepts and theories, the contributors explore these crisscrossing traditions and work against an essentialist notion of media to conceptualize the dynamic interrelationship between images and their context.

Scott Curtis is Associate Professor in the Department of Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University. He is author of The Shape of Spectatorship: Art, Science, and Early Cinema in Germany.

Philippe Gauthier lectures in cinema and media at the University of Ottawa. He is author of Le montage alterné avant Griffith.

Tom Gunning is Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. He is author of D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph and The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity.

Joshua Yumibe is Associate Professor and Director of Film Studies at Michigan State University. He is author of Moving Color: Early Film, Mass Culture, Modernism, and author of Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema.

Richard Abel is Professor Emeritus of International Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Michigan. His recent books include Americanizing the Movies and 'Movie-Mad' Audiences, 1910-1914, and Menus for Movie Land: Newspapers and the Emergence of American Film Culture, 1913-1916.

Kaveh Askari is Associate Professor of English and Film Studies at Michigan State University. He is author of Making Movies into Art: Picture Craft from the Magic Lantern to Early Hollywood.

Ian Christie is Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck College. His recent books include The Art of Film: John Box and Production Design and Doctor Zhivago.

Denis Condon is Lecturer in Cinema at Maynooth University. He is author of Early Irish Cinema, 1895-1921.

Scott Curtis is Associate Professor in the Department of Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University. He is author of The Shape of Spectatorship: Art, Science, and Early Cinema in Germany.

Marina Dahlquist is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at Stockholm University. She is editor of Exporting Perilous Pauline: Pearl White and the Serial Film Craze.

Leslie DeLassus recently completed a dissertation in Film Studies at the University of Iowa titled "Salvage Historiography: Viewing, Special Effects, and Norman Dawn's Unpreserved Archive" and teaches online courses in Gender Studies at the University of Mississippi.

Rodolphe Gahéry is a Doctoral Fellow at Université Paris Nanterre. He is presently writing a doctoral dissertation entitled "Les premières actualités filmées (1895-1914): des Cinématographes au Cinéma?"

Philippe Gauthier lectures in cinema and media at the University of Ottawa. He is author of Le montage alterné avant Griffith.

Frank Gray is Director of Screen Archive South East at the University of Brighton. He is editor with Kaveh Askari, Scott Curtis, Louis Pelletier, Tami Wililams, and Joshua Yumibe of Performing New Media, 1890-1915.

Tom Gunning is Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. He is author of D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph, and The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity.

Florian Hoof is Assistant Professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Media Cultures of Computer Simulation at Leuphana University Lüneburg. He is author of Engel der Effizienz. Eine Mediengeschichte der Unternehmensberatung and Angels of Efficiency: A Media History of Consulting.

Laura Horak is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University. She is author of Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema and editor with Jennifer M. Bean and Anupama Kapse of Silent Cinema and the Politics of Space (IUP).

Jérémy Houillère is a doctoral candidate in Film Studies at the University of Rennes 2 and the University of Montreal. His thesis is on intermedial relations between the early French comic films (1900-1914) and the satirical press of the period.

Gunnar Iversen is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University. He is author with Astrid Soderbergh Widding and Tytti Soila of Nordic National Cinemas and editor with Jan Ketil Simonsen of Beyond the Visual: Sound and Image in Ethnographic and Documentary Film.

Martin L. Johnson is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at The Catholic University of America. He is author of Main Street Movies: The History of Local Film in the United States (IUP).

Frank Kessler is Professor of Media History at Utrecht University and Director of Utrecht University's Research Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICON). He is author of Mise en scène, and co-editor or Networks of Entertainment. Early Film Distribution 1895-1915.

Dimitrios Latsis is Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the School of Image Arts of Ryerson University in Toronto.

Sabine Lenk is a film archivist, media historian, and affiliated researcher at Utrecht University. She is author of Vom Tanzsaal zum Filmtheater. Eine Kinogeschichte Düsseldorfs.

Tom Paulus teaches film history and film aesthetics at the University of Antwerp. He is editor with Rob King of Slapstick Comedy.

Jennifer Lynn Peterson is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at Woodbury University. She is author of Education in the School of Dreams: Travelogues and Early Nonfiction Film.

Ryan Pierson is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication, Media, and Film at the University of Calgary.

Jelena Rakin is a doctoral candidate in the Film Studies department at the University of Zurich. She is finishing a dissertation titled "Film Color 1895-1930. Aesthetics, Materiality, Discourses of Modernity."

Valentine Robert is Lecturer in History and Aesthetics of Cinema at the University of Lausanne. She is co-editor of Le film sur l'art, entre histoire de l'art et documentaire de creation.

Jörg Schweinitz is Professor of Film History at the University of Zürich. He is author of Film and Stereotype: A Challenge for Cinema and Theory, and he is editor of Film Bild Kunst: Visuelle Ästhetik des vorklassischen Stummfilms.

Gregory A. Waller is Professor and Chair of Cinema and Media Studies in the Media School at Indiana University. His books include Main Street Amusements: Film and Commercial Entertainment in a Southern City, 1895-1930.

Daniel Wiegand is a postdoctoral researcher at Stockholm University. He is author of Gebannte Bewegung: Tableaux vivants und früher Film in der Kultur der Moderne, and editor with Jörg Schweinitz of Film Bild Kunst: Visuelle Ästhetik im vorklassischen Stummfilm..

Artemis Willis is a doctoral candidate in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago.

Charles Wolfe is Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and has published widely on various aspects of the history of Hollywood, independent, and documentary cinema.

Joshua Yumibe is Associate Professor and Director of Film Studies at Michigan State University. He is author of Moving Color: Early Film, Mass Culture, Modernism, and co-author of Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema.

Scott Curtis is Associate Professor in the Department of Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University. He is author of The Shape of Spectatorship: Art, Science, and Early Cinema in Germany.

Phillipe Gauthier lectures in cinema and media at the University of Ottawa. His is author of Le montage alterné avant Griffith.

Tom Gunning is Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. His is author of D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph and The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity.

Joshua Yumibe is Associate Professor and Director of Film Studies at Michigan State University. He is author of Moving Color: Early Film, Mass Culture, Modernism, and Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema.