The Camera and the Visible
"I'm an eye. A mechanical eye. I, the machine, show you a world the way only
I can see it. I free myself for today and forever from human immobility.
I'm in constant movement. I approach and pull away from objects. I creep
under them. I move alongside a running horse's mouth. I fall and rise
with the falling and rising bodies. This is I, the machine, manoeuvring in the
chaotic movements, recording one movement after another in the most complex
combinations.
Freed from the boundaries of time and space, I co-ordinate any and all
points of the universe, wherever I want them to be. My way leads towards
the creation of a fresh perception of the world. Thus I explain in a new way
the world unkown to you."
Dziga Vertov (russian cineast) (as quoted in Johm Berger,
Ways of Seeing )