Expanded Field

I found Bakers essay to be quite compelling and his thoughts on the changes within the medium gave me hope for the survival (or death) of photography.  Baker claims that the field of photography is expanding (hence the title) he states that "photography" no longer consists of just merely a photograph but can contain much more.  This is not only consisting of much more such as influence from film, painting etc. but can also contain these mediums.  He talks mentions similarly Jeff Wall and Cindy Sherman as Fried did with the mention of the cinematic within their pictures but he also includes cinema itself.  Baker mentions Douglas Gordons work where he would slow down films so they would last for days or even years reducing the narrative version of the film.  Similarly Brian Enos "Thursday Afternoon" consisted of film slowed down which comes in and out of focus and transforms into essentially paintings done through cinema.

Cinema thinks photographically and photography thinks cinematically there is no need for a definitive separation between these mediums the lines can be blurred and this is the expanded field of photography these blurred lines.  Another artist thinking very photographically while working in film is Stan Douglas.  Coming from the Vancouver School (which includes the earlier mentioned Jeff Wall) Douglas plays very interestingly with the narrative qualities of cinema in his piece "Win, Place or Show".  The video is shot using two cameras and are projected together, the video was made to be able to consist of many different combinations of the narrative.  There are enough different combinations to play the film for 20,000 hours of the six minute clip before every combination was used. http://www.ubu.com/film/douglas_win.html