Stan Brakhage The Text of Light (1974)

The featurelength The Text of Light (1974) consists entirely of abstracted patterns of light photographed through a thick, deepgreen ashtray. Anticipating his nonphotographic abstract films of the 80s and 90s, it reduces photography to its ratio ultima, the influence of light on photographic emulsion. in photographing this ashtray for instance, Im sitting for hours to get 30 seconds of film. Im sitting watching whats happening and clicking a frame, and sitting and watching, and further than that, I had shot several hundred feet and they seemed dead. They didnt reflect at all my excitement and emotion and feeling. They had no anima in them, except for two or three shots where the lens which was on a tripod, pressed against the desk, had jerked. Those were just random, but what gave me the clue. What I began doing was always holding the camera in hand. For hours. Clicking. Waiting. Seeing what the sun did to the scene. As I saw what was happening in the frame to these little particles of light, chan