The Text of Light

Time-lapse photography of books, paintings, reflections, and light falling on textures,{{cite web

|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/16/arts/design/aldo-tambellinis-atlantic-in-brooklyn-chronicles-a-grittier-time.html

|title=Aldo Tambellini's 'Atlantic in Brooklyn' Chronicles a Grittier Time

|author=Martha Schwendenerost

|date=2015-10-15

|newspaper=The New York Times

|quote=Car headlights and taillights become abstract orbs, similar to Stan Brakhage’s experimental film “The Text of Light” (1974)

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180104105357/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/16/arts/design/aldo-tambellinis-atlantic-in-brooklyn-chronicles-a-grittier-time.html

|archive-date=2018-01-04

|access-date=2018-01-04}} shot entirely through a glass ashtray.{{cite web

|url=https://www.moma.org/collection/works/89260

|title=Stan Brakhage: The Text of Light

|publisher=Museum of Modern Art

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180104104747/https://www.moma.org/collection/works/89260

|archive-date=2018-01-04

|access-date=2018-01-04}}

The film is considered an "epistemological meditation": "This uncommon lens [that is the glass ashtray] generates an equally uncommon image of the world. The density and shape of the glass subtracts linear perspective from the visual field. In this respect, the ash-tray takes up part of the function of rapid camera movements and zooms in other Brakhage films insofar as the ash-tray demolishes perspective. As well, in Text of Light objects lose their individuation, their outlines blurred in masses of light and color."{{Citation |title=Text of Light |date=1998 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/interpreting-the-moving-image/text-of-light/511D96C2A718F546B7A4223E469C3D88 |work=Interpreting the Moving Image |pages=225–227 |editor-last=Carroll |editor-first=Noel |access-date=2023-06-10 |series=Cambridge Studies in Film |place=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-58970-3}} A presentation by Jonathan P. Watts for the Tate underlines the influence of Turner on this film: "In The Text of Light Turner’s influence is felt in the experimental use of colour, and is similarly visionary in the way it collapses naturalistic pictorial space."{{Cite web |last=Watts |first=Jonathan P. |title=Into the light with JMW Turner – Tate Etc |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/tate-etc/issue-32-autumn-2014/light-jmw-turner |access-date=2023-06-10 |website=Tate |language=en-GB}}

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{{Stan Brakhage}}

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Category:1974 films

Category:Films directed by Stan Brakhage

Category:1970s avant-garde and experimental films

Category:1970s American films

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