The Lure of the Image shows how a close study of camera movement challenges key assumptions under... more The Lure of the Image shows how a close study of camera movement challenges key assumptions underlying a wide range of debates within cinema and media studies. Highlighting the shifting intersection of point of view and camera position, Daniel Morgan draws on a range of theoretical arguments and detailed analyses across cinemas to reimagine the relation between spectator and camera—and between camera and film world. With sustained accounts of how the camera moves in films by Fritz Lang, Guru Dutt, Max Ophuls, and Terrence Malick and in contemporary digital technologies, The Lure of the Image exposes the persistent fantasy that we move with the camera within the world of the film and examines the ways that filmmakers have exploited this fantasy. In so doing, Morgan provides a more flexible account of camera movement, one that enables a fuller understanding of the political and ethical stakes entailed by this key component of cinematic style.
In this beautifully written and deeply researched study, Hannah Frank provides an original way to understand American animated cartoons from the Golden Age of animation (1920–1960). In the pre-digital age of the twentieth century, the making of cartoons was mechanized and standardized: thousands of drawings were inked and painted onto individual transparent celluloid sheets (called “cels”) and then photographed in succession, a labor-intensive process that was divided across scores of artists and technicians. In order to see the art, labor, and technology of cel animation, Frank slows cartoons down to look frame by frame, finding hitherto unseen aspects of the animated image. What emerges is both a methodology and a highly original account of an art formed on the assembly line.
This virtual roundtable was conducted from May 10 to June 2, 2020 over e-mail, across four rounds... more This virtual roundtable was conducted from May 10 to June 2, 2020 over e-mail, across four rounds of statements and responses. The participants were Christopher Ball, Meghanne Barker, Elizabeth Edwards, Tomáš Kolich, W. J. T. Mitchell, Daniel Morgan, and Constantine V. Nakassis, who also functioned as the moderator of the discussion. Oriented by the question of the indexicality of the image, the roundtable covered a wide range of topics—from COVID-19 and the 2020 U.S. protests against racial injustice to indexical desire and anxiety, animation, realism, ideology and ontology, Peircean semiotics versus Saussurean semiology, the concept and use of indexicality in art history, linguistic anthropology, film studies, photography studies, among other topics.
The Lure of the Image shows how a close study of camera movement challenges key assumptions under... more The Lure of the Image shows how a close study of camera movement challenges key assumptions underlying a wide range of debates within cinema and media studies. Highlighting the shifting intersection of point of view and camera position, Daniel Morgan draws on a range of theoretical arguments and detailed analyses across cinemas to reimagine the relation between spectator and camera—and between camera and film world. With sustained accounts of how the camera moves in films by Fritz Lang, Guru Dutt, Max Ophuls, and Terrence Malick and in contemporary digital technologies, The Lure of the Image exposes the persistent fantasy that we move with the camera within the world of the film and examines the ways that filmmakers have exploited this fantasy. In so doing, Morgan provides a more flexible account of camera movement, one that enables a fuller understanding of the political and ethical stakes entailed by this key component of cinematic style.
In this beautifully written and deeply researched study, Hannah Frank provides an original way to understand American animated cartoons from the Golden Age of animation (1920–1960). In the pre-digital age of the twentieth century, the making of cartoons was mechanized and standardized: thousands of drawings were inked and painted onto individual transparent celluloid sheets (called “cels”) and then photographed in succession, a labor-intensive process that was divided across scores of artists and technicians. In order to see the art, labor, and technology of cel animation, Frank slows cartoons down to look frame by frame, finding hitherto unseen aspects of the animated image. What emerges is both a methodology and a highly original account of an art formed on the assembly line.
This virtual roundtable was conducted from May 10 to June 2, 2020 over e-mail, across four rounds... more This virtual roundtable was conducted from May 10 to June 2, 2020 over e-mail, across four rounds of statements and responses. The participants were Christopher Ball, Meghanne Barker, Elizabeth Edwards, Tomáš Kolich, W. J. T. Mitchell, Daniel Morgan, and Constantine V. Nakassis, who also functioned as the moderator of the discussion. Oriented by the question of the indexicality of the image, the roundtable covered a wide range of topics—from COVID-19 and the 2020 U.S. protests against racial injustice to indexical desire and anxiety, animation, realism, ideology and ontology, Peircean semiotics versus Saussurean semiology, the concept and use of indexicality in art history, linguistic anthropology, film studies, photography studies, among other topics.
The introduction to this special issue traces the interactions between the rise of media archaeol... more The introduction to this special issue traces the interactions between the rise of media archaeology and the field of cinema and media studies. Arguing that media archaeology provided a necessary corrective around the question of media, I aim to show how its focus on historical narratives—especially on models of temporality—has led to a critical stagnation and a blind spot with regard to non‐Western media. Drawing on the resources in film studies for thinking about the trans‐ or international movement of media, I set out the need for and terms of a globalizing media archaeology.
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Books by Daniel Morgan
In this beautifully written and deeply researched study, Hannah Frank provides an original way to understand American animated cartoons from the Golden Age of animation (1920–1960). In the pre-digital age of the twentieth century, the making of cartoons was mechanized and standardized: thousands of drawings were inked and painted onto individual transparent celluloid sheets (called “cels”) and then photographed in succession, a labor-intensive process that was divided across scores of artists and technicians. In order to see the art, labor, and technology of cel animation, Frank slows cartoons down to look frame by frame, finding hitherto unseen aspects of the animated image. What emerges is both a methodology and a highly original account of an art formed on the assembly line.
Papers by Daniel Morgan
In this beautifully written and deeply researched study, Hannah Frank provides an original way to understand American animated cartoons from the Golden Age of animation (1920–1960). In the pre-digital age of the twentieth century, the making of cartoons was mechanized and standardized: thousands of drawings were inked and painted onto individual transparent celluloid sheets (called “cels”) and then photographed in succession, a labor-intensive process that was divided across scores of artists and technicians. In order to see the art, labor, and technology of cel animation, Frank slows cartoons down to look frame by frame, finding hitherto unseen aspects of the animated image. What emerges is both a methodology and a highly original account of an art formed on the assembly line.