portraits in motion

if you are in new york, let me live vicariously through you and please go see andy warhol:motion pictures at the moma. i feel like warhol was so ahead of the game with his screen test portraits, and saw a few on a larger scale when i was in seattle at the exhibit love fear pleasure lust pain glamour death that i mentioned, here.

to me, the screen test portrait captures (one of) the only things that a photographic portrait cant fully convey, which is gesture, and the character one brings to their appearance through an individual style of motion. this is what is so enamouring and hypnotic about the screen tests. as i wrote on june 19, the sense of immediacy you feel looking into the eyes of a young edie sedgwick, for example, is so sharply contrasted by the realization that it is not immediacy you are feeling... its just that you are seeing what the still image cannot capture: life, movement, gesture, as it happens.