Synthèse photo-cinématographique

Like muddled impressions of an indulgent evening, Jean Dréville’s multiple exposure photograph tilts in and out of coherence: layered views of crystal coupes and glinting barware simulate the perspective of someone slightly sloshed. In this and related darkroom experiments from the late 1920s, which Dréville termed "photo-cinematic syntheses," he toasts the medium’s innovative potential and tests its temporality. Remembered today for his prolific film career, the French director first studied photography and graphic design, and this early work reflects a sharpening avant-garde sensibility. In 1927, querying new frontiers of camera work, Dréville founded Cinégraphie, an influential review of new film and photography. (He would go on to start two other film journals in as many years.) This photograph first appeared in the pages of the review’s November 1927 issue. Light retouching on the surface of the print—to sharpen the crease of the reveler’s cuff, and further define his fingernails—testifies to the publication process. Dréville relished such opportunities for post-hoc revision; writing in Cinégraphie, he praised the malleability of photographic prints, wherein "anything superfluous recorded by the lens that harms the balance of the composition" could be removed in the darkroom. By comparison, cinematography seemed to him hopelessly confined within the "immutable rectangle of the screen." Yet Dréville began work on his first movie just a few months later, and soon set aside photography for good. Offering a rare glimpse into the director’s experimental early practice, this print points to an increasing fluidity between modernist photography and film.