RE-FOCUS, AD INFINITUM

BY MICHAEL PERKINS

PHOTOGRAPHS NOT ONLY RECORD HISTORY: they also function as history itself, used both in the  context of their first creation, and later as illustrations for purposes beyond their original context. We cannot look at breadline images from the Great Depression without seeing all want or hunger in all ages: we can’t help but see the faces of our own dead in Matthew Brady’s jarring scenes from the American Civil War. Photos are given one identity by their makers, and then are asked to play other roles as they move forward in time. 

As one example, lately, I have seen increased use of this image from Buster Keaton’s legendary silent feature The General in articles about dysfunction in both nations and governments, as a fairly on-the-nose example of a “train wreck”, or a situation gone horribly wrong. Ironically, the picture began as proof that one of the most challenging productions of the period had gone amazingly right. 

Forever a depiction of “best laid plans”: the spectacular crash from Buster Keaton’s The General (1926)

The film tells the story of an engineer whose devotion to his beloved locomotive, dubbed “The General”, and his crucial role in conveying supplies and troops for the Confederacy. After many an adventure both above and below North/South battle lines, the train meets its doom attempting to cross a trestle that has been set ablaze, the whole works collapsing into the river below. 

Shooting the overall film in Oregon, a rarity in the days when most movies were shot almost exclusively on studio “back lots”, Keaton selected a crash location near a town named Cottage Grove, which declared a holiday on the morning of the big scene so all the locals (nearly 4,000 of them) could see the one-take spectacle, cheering on their own state National Guard, who crossed the river below the trestle costumed as federal and confederate troops. Making sure that the actual, full-size “Texas” locomotive would make it nearly across the bridge before its collapse was one of the things that made the sequence, at a cost of $42,000 in 1926 money, the single most expensive shot of the entire silent era. Keaton captured the scene with six cameras as extra insurance, and the crash entered popular history even as the film, although later considered a classic, initially failed at the box office.

There are many photographs whose lives far outlast the original periods in which they were created, whether they become symbols of celebration, or, in the case of the General, failure and devastation. Either way, what we shoot today could well serve other uses in other times, for intentons beyond our wildest speculation.