THE PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGE

My aim in this chapter is to focus on Brecht's writings on photography and film so as to address anew the aesthetic and political questions he raises, as well as to reveal his theoretical proximity with classical film theory and contemporary debates on film and media theory. The first crucial context for understanding Brecht's view of cinema is – as it is also the case with other important film/media theorists such as André Bazin, Siegfried Kracauer and Walter Benjamin – his work on photography. While comments on Brecht's mistrust of photographic realism abound (see Forrest 2015: 53; Elsaesser 2009: 4; White 2004: 267), making one assume that he did not see any fruitful potential in the evidentiary quality of photography, a closer look at the influences of photography on his work, and his own theoretical writings on it, paints a much more complex picture. Equally instructive is the fact that Brecht took advantage of the possibilities offered by the photographic medium in his Arbeitsjournal (Work Diaries), his renowned photobook Kriegsfibel (War Primer), and the photo-documentations of his own productions, the well-known Modelbücher (Modelbooks). In his Work Diaries, Brecht uses a plethora of pictures from popular magazines and newspapers that are countered by his own texts and notes producing a series of montage effects. This is also achieved in a more forceful way in War Primer, a photobook, which contains photographs from popular wartime magazines accompanied by epigrams added by Brecht. The added texts produce montage/gestic effects and disrupt the magazines’ rhetorical assertions. Finally, the Modelbooks include numerous pictures from rehearsals and theatre productions committed to producing models for future productions. They also emphasise productive ways of putting the theory of a new theatre into practice, by capturing minor details such as gestures, postures and other visual aspects of the productions. As Tom Kuhn explains, the Modelbooks are an important example of Brecht's faith in photography's capacity not simply to document, but also to construct something out of the visual documents (see BOT: 146).

In the previous chapter, I discussed the filmic origins of the Brechtian concept of Gestus. Brecht's understanding of cinema was inextricably linked to the medium's roots in photography – another sign of convergence with classical film theory, as I elaborate below.