Besides being a self-portrait of Mangolte as photographer, this important experimental documentary is basically concerned with the acts and toils involved in the art of photography - between observation and sentiment or imagination and between control and impulse. Again, we see everything through the subjective camera and the lens of the photographer. In the first part, Mangolte fervently shoots portraits in a studio and we hear the shutter closing and her giving instructions, but also philosophizing, among others, about whether photography is a form of voyeurism. In the second part, through the lens of her hand held camera we see images of Manhattan and its chaos, and hear her saying to herself “Relax...here...here”. According to Constance Penley: “It is as if we were watching ourselves being photographed, as if the screen we’re watching is photographing us”.
Babette Mangolte (1941) is a French-American director, cinematographer, photographer and artist who has lived in New York since 1970. She has worked as a cinematographer with Chantal Akerman and Yvonne Rainer and has made important experimental films on the very act of looking about the American landscape, about contemporary dance and the art of performance. She is considered one of the most important artists of the American avant-garde and currently teaches at the University of San Diego in California.
Photos: The Camera: Je, or La Caméra: I, Jim and building ©1976 Babette Mangolte, all rights of reproduction reserved
