ABSTRACT

This article explores the quickening pace of visual time in the nineteenth century from ‘slow’ portrayals, evidenced in long series showing gradual change over time, to ‘fast’ visual time conveyed through ‘before-and-after’ jump cuts. Drawing from film studies, it argues that popular image makers not only played a central role in creating innovative ways to represent people’s new experiences of accelerated time, but also, in the process, contributed to that acceleration themselves. Often using state-of-the-art printing and distribution technologies, image makers exposed Americans, and particularly nascent consumers, to ever-more-sophisticated forms of commercial representations that helped not only to accustom them to the faster pace and disorientation of mass transportation, communications, and production but also to embrace it. Radically different from their pictorial precursors, before-and-after images, which became common visual tropes late in the century, were key to this new temporality. Because they compressed time by distilling its passage into two succinct images – using what film historians refer to as ‘the cut’ – these illustrations did not simply function as innovative forms of commercial information selling specific goods. More significantly, they encouraged consumers to place themselves at the center of a much larger story of modernity, progress, and transformation.

摘要

本文探讨了 19 世纪视觉时间的加快步伐，从“缓慢”的描绘（在显示随时间逐渐变化的长系列中得到证明）到通过“前后”跳跃剪辑传达的“快速”视觉时间。从电影研究中，它认为流行的图像制作者不仅在创造创新方式来代表人们对加速时间的新体验方面发挥了核心作用，而且在这个过程中，他们自己也为这种加速做出了贡献。通常使用最先进的印刷和发行技术，图像制作者让美国人，尤其是新生消费者接触到越来越复杂的商业表现形式，这不仅有助于他们适应更快的速度和大众运输的迷失方向、通讯、生产还要去拥抱它。与他们的图像前身完全不同的是，前后图像在本世纪后期成为常见的视觉比喻，是这种新时间性的关键。因为他们通过将其段落提炼成两个简洁的图像来压缩时间——使用电影历史学家所说的“剪辑”——这些插图并不仅仅是作为销售特定商品的商业信息的创新形式。更重要的是，他们鼓励消费者将自己置于更大的现代性、进步和转型故事的中心。因为他们通过将其段落提炼成两个简洁的图像来压缩时间——使用电影历史学家所说的“剪辑”——这些插图并不仅仅是作为销售特定商品的商业信息的创新形式。更重要的是，他们鼓励消费者将自己置于更大的现代性、进步和转型故事的中心。因为他们通过将其段落提炼成两个简洁的图像来压缩时间——使用电影历史学家所说的“剪辑”——这些插图并不仅仅是作为销售特定商品的商业信息的创新形式。更重要的是，他们鼓励消费者将自己置于更大的现代性、进步和转型故事的中心。