The Broken Wave is a short documentary/narrative focusing on Gustave Le Gray, a French photographer of the 19th century. One of the first photographers to insist that photography was itself an art form, the film follows his early mature period through the end of his life. Le Gray’s story is told through the recreation and reinterpretation of certain photographs of Le Gray’s, which I shot on “dirty dupe” (a reversal film that produces a sepia tone, hence the name) and which I then developed by hand. Using the Bolex, I created the flicker effect by hand cranking the film through the gate, thereby altering each frames exposure. I tried to create a film that might appear to have been made far in the past, while at the same time using contemporary content to distort and undermine that very perception. The selection of images covers his landscape, architecture, portraiture, and an emphasis on his seascape photography, for which he is most famous.
