Andrew G. Taylor

Dead but Still / Moving: Slides Shows, Documentary and Me Andrew G. Taylor

Dead but still/moving? looks at the ?still/moving?; that is, creative work in a space between still images (photography) and moving pictures (cinema). Recently there has been a wave of interest in the still/moving in installation art and feature films but there has been virtually no written commentary on the still/moving in documentary, and even less on the slide show and documentary. From magic lantern shows to PowerPoint presentations, the slide show has cast a long shadow on documentary film. In the 1880s the New York Police reporter, Jacob Riis, barnstormed America with magic lantern images of urban poverty; and in 2006, An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary woven around Al Gore?s slide show PowerPoint presentation, screened to audiences around the world. Dead but still/moving? looks at how the slide show has haunted documentary and reveals a pre-occupation still/moving films have with time, memory, mortality and death. The focus on the intersection between the slide show and documentary is insightful for thinking about the relationship between cinema, photography, documentary and auto/biography. Dead but still/moving? will appeal to those working in and across these fields