Photography

Modern Western philosophical patriarch René Descartes is probably best known for his pithy dictum: cogito ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”) – a formulation which led him step by step to a “dualistic” vision of existence, with a radical divide between the physical body and the purely spiritual “mind”.

For the truly serious cineaste, Joel Finler’s Hollywood Movie Stills:  Art and Technique in the Golden Age of the Studios is a buffet of exquisite ironies.  For one:  that much of the history, the grandeur and the glitz, the behind-the-scenes grit and the red carpet glory associated with the moving picture have come to us …