LIVING PHOTOGRAPHY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1260, 23 April 1896, Page 38

LIVING PHOTOGRAPHY.

Pliotogr tphy, and, indeed, all pictorial art, has hitherto fallen short of reproducing a moving living picture. We have fixed portraits and scenes, but life and movement aro entirely absent from the pictures. AVhat would he thought of a reproduction of a busy street scene, with calrs and omnibuses and crowds of people, all in motion. The thing seems well nigh impossible, but if we are to credit an exhibition of the “ Cinematograph o,” invented by Messrs A. and L. Lumiero, given recently at the Marlborough Hall, Regent street, London, photographs can bo reproduced so as to form a moving, animated life-size picture. Such photographs were shown on a large white screen by means of the electric light. There was a railway station with a train dashing in and passengers getting into the carriages, and alighting when it had stopped, and the outside of a big factory with departing operatives issuing forth till tho last worker was gone. A. seaside photograph showed bathers jumping headlong into the sea from a spring board, and another depicted a gardener with a hose watering Hie flower beds while someone played tricks upon him. A. domestic picture was shown of father and mother, with (heir infant prodigy, at a tea table, and the parents’ delight at the child feeding was a true bit of nature. Yet another photograph exhibited three gentlemen playing at cards outside an inn, and a waiter approaches with a bottle of wine, which is poured out and drunk. Tho whole action of card-playing, with tho laughing of the group, and even the smoke ascending from their cigars, was vividly displayed. Now, all these were photographed scenes from real life, as well as one showing a crowded thoroughfare. Now, then, were they reproduced so that the spectators in front of the screen saw thereon the scenes enacted again beforetheir eyes? The explanation is simply (hat the photographs were taken on a continuous band at the rate of 900 a minute, lining instantaneous photography so rapidly continued—fifteen to the second — that every aspect of a scene is caught. These photographs being projected on the -n by the electric light at exactly the s ime rate of movement a changing picture is 'produced faithful to the original. By this means people in a room may have reproduced in lifelike style many scenes, even, say, the finish to the Derby at Epsom.