City Film Strips

Production Notes

1978

72 3” X 5” Photographs
GRID: 12 Rows X 6 Photographs Per Row

During the late 1970s and early 1980's I made a series of photographic and sculptural works that explored ways of representing a range of essential cinematic "ideas," outside of conventional cinematic grammar. I made paper films -- some of them found objects re-imagined -- photographic collages, assemblages of cardboard and other materials, and a wide range of other conceptual works, all in search of alternative ways of expressing my love of cinema without necessarily making (actual) films.

CITY FILM STRIPS comes out of my preoccupation with the urban landscape, in particular, a series of short (and silent) black and white films I made titled in 1976 titled, 4 CORNER TIME. These short films are studies of the rhythms, the geometry, the graphic qualities, and the structure of traffic patterns taking place on one urban street corner.

CITY FILM STRIPS, shot in Norman, Oklahoma in 1978, is focused on the abstract geometry of the street – the textures, lines, arrows, signs, symbols – and other found paintings – that form the graphic lexicon of the urban landscape.