One Second to Live: Photography, Film and the Corporeal in an Age of Extremes

One Second to Live: Photography, Film and the Corporeal in An Age of Extremes is a book, in 16 chapters, that covers the aspect of photography and film that deals with the "substantial" and the "non-spiritual" - the two dictionary definitions of the corporeal. Corporeal images - moving or still - explore our common terrestrial existence in a particular place (as opposed to space) and a specific time ( as opposed to non-temporal imaginary realms peculiar to science fiction of fantasy).

Whatever the vast difference in corporeal photographs and films they all deal in some way with our innate, and complex relationship to all living things and to our own sensibility. Such a view accepts as a starting point that stories are lived in bodies and made in them. As a result corporeal works are usually grounded in an intensive appreciation of sense experience. Lastly, in corporeal works there is usually a sense of doubt about any arrangement that might organize this experience into a system or a philosophy - doubt is often ever-present, not as angst but as play - or just to complicate matters as some fusion of the two.

Whatever the subject or themes, corporeal poetics are invariably also celebrations of the density of being. The corporeal artwork's most salient philosophical quality is usually some form of melancholy skepticism and stoicism balanced out by a variety of Epicurean gratifications. While these are expressed more often in ironic asides, jokes, reveries, satires or aphorisms, than in formal writings or artworks, the latter are the subject of this book where we will address the corporeal aspects of still and moving images.The 16 essays that make up the book primarily cover the 20th century starting with the auspicious meeting between Edward Weston and Tina Modotti in 1919, and on to Gerhard Richters "painting as photography" in the early 21st century. It is my hope that this book entertains, clarifies, and puts the work of these master photographers and filmmakers into some historical and cultural perspective.