Edited with text by Leah Lehmbeck, Britt Salvesen, Vanessa R. Schwartz. Text by Brian R. Jacobson.
How film emerged in 19th-century Paris amid an array of social, political, artistic and technological innovations—with works by the Lumiere brothers, Mélies, Chéret and more
City of Cinema traces film’s evolution from an obscure entertainment to the most powerful art form of the 20th century. Placing cinema in the context of 19th-century Parisian visual culture, this book brings together posters, paintings, studio and documentary photography, and film stills that evoke Paris as a site of consumption, demonstrate early cinema’s relationship with technology and the fine arts, and highlight local and global spaces of film production. It also examines the aspects of 19th-century visual culture that gave rise to cinema as a quintessentially modern medium with an eager audience. Aligning with French beliefs that the nation’s culture would be democratized through consumption, cinema reinforced a set of assumptions about French cultural and political authority and disseminated these ideas to the rest of the world. Presented here are images of and from the street by Jean Béraud, Charles Marville, Jules Chéret and Auguste and Louis Lumière; the technological experimentation of Loïe Fuller, Émile Reynaud and Georges Méliès; and the plein-air observations of Camille Pissarro and the staged artifice of Jean-Leon Gerome—all of which can be considered alongside the prototype film studios of Georges Méliès, Gaumont and Pathé. At the dawn of the 20th century, cinema is as much, if not more, a way of appropriating the world. Through arresting images and incisive texts, this book examines the origins of cinema and its position as a global medium.
Stills from 'L’Écrin du Rajah' (The Rajah’s Casket), Gaston Velle, Pathé, 1906. Reproduced from 'City of Cinema: Paris 1850–1907'.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Artforum
Peter Lunenfeld
A meticulously researched deep dive into geolocative film history.
AIGA
Clear strong typography over a beautiful image. A simple, but strong cover.
in stock $55.00
Free Shipping
UPS GROUND IN THE CONTINENTAL U.S. FOR CONSUMER ONLINE ORDERS
Featured image—a detail of an October 1908 photograph of the Omnia-Pathé cinema at 5, boulevard Montmartre, Paris—is reproduced from City of Cinema: Paris 1850–1907. Published to accompany the exhibition currently on view at LACMA, this rich, 192-page volume tells the story of the pre-Hollywood origins of cinema emerging out of nineteenth-century Paris through posters, paintings, film stills and studio and documentary photography. It also provides a snapshot of the city that Walter Benjamin called “the capital of the nineteenth century” at the moment of modernization, when the very nature of visual art expanded exponentially. “Daily life hinged on vision in motion,” curators Leah Lehmbeck, Britt Salvesen and Vanessa R. Schwartz write: “lens- and projection-based entertainments (from dioramas to magic lantern shows to cinema) corralled vision into states of attention and distraction, and these new preoccupations led to aesthetic and scientific experiments in defining, fixing and representing isolated and serial moments, pursued in inventors’ workshops, physiological laboratories and artists’ studios. The French took pride in their position as key innovators in all the arts, from painting, sculpture and architecture; through reproductive media such as lithography and photography; and extending to the performing arts and novel leisure activities such as shopping in department stores and visiting nightclubs, dance halls and new kinds of theatrical presentations.” continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.75 x 11.5 in. / 192 pgs / 174 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $55.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $75 GBP £44.00 ISBN: 9781636810218 PUBLISHER: DelMonico Books/Los Angeles County Museum of Art AVAILABLE: 4/5/2022 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by DelMonico Books/Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Edited with text by Leah Lehmbeck, Britt Salvesen, Vanessa R. Schwartz. Text by Brian R. Jacobson.
How film emerged in 19th-century Paris amid an array of social, political, artistic and technological innovations—with works by the Lumiere brothers, Mélies, Chéret and more
City of Cinema traces film’s evolution from an obscure entertainment to the most powerful art form of the 20th century. Placing cinema in the context of 19th-century Parisian visual culture, this book brings together posters, paintings, studio and documentary photography, and film stills that evoke Paris as a site of consumption, demonstrate early cinema’s relationship with technology and the fine arts, and highlight local and global spaces of film production. It also examines the aspects of 19th-century visual culture that gave rise to cinema as a quintessentially modern medium with an eager audience. Aligning with French beliefs that the nation’s culture would be democratized through consumption, cinema reinforced a set of assumptions about French cultural and political authority and disseminated these ideas to the rest of the world.
Presented here are images of and from the street by Jean Béraud, Charles Marville, Jules Chéret and Auguste and Louis Lumière; the technological experimentation of Loïe Fuller, Émile Reynaud and Georges Méliès; and the plein-air observations of Camille Pissarro and the staged artifice of Jean-Leon Gerome—all of which can be considered alongside the prototype film studios of Georges Méliès, Gaumont and Pathé.
At the dawn of the 20th century, cinema is as much, if not more, a way of appropriating the world. Through arresting images and incisive texts, this book examines the origins of cinema and its position as a global medium.
