Photograph
About Photograph
A photographer tries to pose a client who will not hold still. The sitter checks his face in a hand mirror, then stands up to peer into the camera just as the picture is about to be taken. In the Lumière catalog version of the gag, the photographer knocks his own camera over and loses his temper.
Cast & crew
More about Photograph
Louis Lumière directed the one-shot comedy. Auguste Lumière plays the sitter. A French cast list names Clément Maurice as the photographer. The catalog line says the photographer, trying to pose a client who keeps gesturing, overturns the camera.
Themes
Background
A Lumière comedy from 1895, the year of their first paid public program in Paris.
Making
The Lumière brothers staged the gag with Auguste as the restless customer and a working camera as the prop that gets knocked down.
Look
One fixed camera records the photographer, the sitter, and the fallen apparatus.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
A copy is on Wikimedia Commons under the title Photographe.
Notes
- The French title is Photographe.
- SensCritique dates a French release listing to 4 December 1895 and quotes the catalog sentence about the overturned camera.
- It is a single-setup joke, about one minute, the length of a Lumière roll.
Scenes
- The sitter stands up to inspect the lens at the moment the photographer is ready.
- The camera goes over and the photographer turns on his client.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons
