Project 1 Research Point (iv) concluded

Tags

Beneath the Roses, Constructed image, Fabricated image, Gregory Crewdson, Jeff Wall, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Theatres of the Real

The emotional depth in Crewdson’s work is of a kind that depends almost completely on the viewer’s interpretation of the elaborate tableau image (see above). Another way of expressing this is that Crewdson’s photographs possess an ‘incompleteness’ (Banks, 2008). In making this point Banks remarks:

Vladimir Nabokov once noted that as the novel is to reality, movies are to the novel, i.e., a sharp reduction and simplification of the infinite plenitude of human existence. I might extend that equation and add that as the novel is to reality and movies are to the novel, photographs are to movies (Banks, 2008).

But, Banks suggests, Crewdson’s photograph’s, because of their property of incompleteness, are the exception to this progressive abstraction i.e. from reality, to the novel, to the movies to the photograph. Further, that:

Most photographs, even staged cinematographic photographs like those of the nineteenth-century Victorian Henry Peach Robinson, for example, or some of Crewdson’s near-contemporaries like Jeff Wall and Cindy Sherman, are complete (Banks, 2008).

Here an argument is being made that a quality (‘incompleteness’) distinguishes Crewdson’s work from other ‘staged cinematographic’ (above) photographers such as Jeff Wall and Philip-Lorca diCorcia. Could it be this quality that leads to the suggestion that Crewdson’s work ‘lacks the subtlety and nuance of Wall and diCorcia’s’ (see initial question above)?

Certainly diCorcia has written of his images that ‘there is no “plot”’ (diCorcia, s.d) and that:

the plot, as such, is generated by the realities at play at the moment, which include subjective states, objective observations, the interpretation of the sociopolitical dynamics at work AND the desire to give all these elements unprejudiced freedom from the predispositions that photography naturally creates (diCorcia, s.d).

DiCorcia also remarks that he wants ‘to remove photography’s biggest attraction – the offering of second hand experience’ (diCorcia, s.d). Looking now at a representative image of Crewdson’s, one from his series ‘Beneath the Roses’ (see fig. 1.), it can be seen to have those two qualities that diCorcia seeks to eschew, namely ‘plot’ in the cinematic sense, and also the particularly cinematic element of ‘the offering of second hand experience’ to the viewer, drawing them into the intense cinematic narrative of the image.

It is worth remembering with regard to documentary photography that:

… if narrative and storytelling help the spectator to make sense of the real, this sense is always biased, it reflects the strong editorial intervention of the maker and thus a veiling rather than an unveiling of reality. This deeply rooted distrust of narrative as an instrument of deception, manipulation, propaganda and spin-doctoring, is what bridges the gap between modernist and postmodernist forms of critical photography. What is different are the means that are used, what is similar is the goal. Modernist critical documentary, like the one illustrated by pioneers such as August Sander or Robert Capa, refused the crutch of storytelling in the hope of showing things as they were (Baetens, 2009).

Baetens goes on to suggest that:

Postmodern critical documentary, … exhibits and even exaggerates all setting, staging, re-enactment and storytelling devices, but in the hope of short-circuiting them (Baetens, 2009).

Baetens points out that both strategies are utopian:

modern critical photography can’t escape completely from storytelling, just as postmodern critical photography can’t block its narrative interpretations (Baetens, 2009).

In his work Gregory Crewdon does not try to ‘block its narrative interpretations’, in fact he encourages them and hence Banks’ (above) detection of the quality of ‘incompleteness’ in the work. This encouragement of narrative interpretations is less apparent in Wall and diCorcia and so they better meet the utopian ideal (above) of postmodern critical documentary of short-circuiting story telling devices. This success must necessarily lead to work that is more subtle and nuanced in its attempts to ‘unveil reality’ (above).

References

Baetens, Jan (2009) ‘The Creative Treatment of Narrative: A Poetics of the In-Between’ In: Theatres of the Real. Brighton: Photoworks. pp. 97 – 101.

Banks, Russell (2008) ‘Gregory Crewdson: Beneath the Roses’ In: Crewdson Beneath the Roses.  New York: Harry N. Abrams. pp. 6 -10

diCorcia, Philip-Lorca (s.d) Reflections on Streetwork 1993-­1997At: http://peterbaker.org/reflections-on-streetwork/ (Accessed on 07.05.15)

List of Illustrations

Figure 1. Crewdson, Gregory (2003-2008) Image #4 from Beneath the Roses. At: http://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/crewd-2003-2005-untitled-maple-street-web.jpg (Accessed on: 07.05.15)

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Project 1 Research Point (iv)

Tags

Constructed image, Fabricated image, Gregory Crewdson, Jeff Wall, National Endowment for the Arts, Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Question: Gregory Crewdson’s practice is ‘an effective method of image-making’ but ‘it lacks the subtlety and nuance of Wall and diCorcia’s work’?

All three artists – Gregory Crewdson (b. 1962), Jeff Wall (b. 1946), Philip-Lorca diCorcia (b. 1951) — have in common the desire to incorporate narrative in their images. Their work along with others has been described:

Blurring the borders between truth and fiction, their ambivalent images hybridize genres, destabilize the eye, sow doubt in the viewer. Exit neutrality, and enter visual sophistication, the development of complex storylines, the spinning of strange tales, the forging of contemporary legends (Couturier, 2011: 60).

An example is Jeff Wall’s ‘Passerby’ (see fig. 1.), which is a photographic tableau, in black and white, showing a man walking along a suburban path at night and turned around to look at the shadowy figure of another person running away. In this image is seen blurred borders ‘between truth and fiction’ and ambivalence (above), also a sense of ‘something’ having just happened or about to happen.  Another image where this latter sense is less to the fore is ‘The Flooded Grave’ (see fig. 2.) which ‘attempts to stage a brief instant which a passer-by momentarily imagines the bottom of the ocean inside a flooded grave’ (Hacking, 2012: 533). The publisher of Wall’s books has described his practice thus:

Over the last three decades Jeff Wall has redefined the photographic image in art. His stunning large-scale photographs exude the dramatic power of history painting with utterly contemporary subject matter (everyday scenes from modern life) and materials (colour transparencies in light boxes). Each of his photographic tableaux is meticulously constructed — carefully staged, precisely lit and, since the late 1980s, digitally adjusted — in a process that the artist often compares to cinematography

Wall has sometimes referred to his photographs as ‘near documentaries’ because they frequently come from scenes he has witnessed in passing and recomposed later. But he also disavows any claims to photographic truth, constructing many of his pictures around works of art and literature, such as the writings of Franz Kafka, Ralph Ellison and Yukio Mishima and the paintings of Hokusai, Delacroix and Caravaggio (Phaidon, s.d).

From the above example images and descriptions the overlap between the practice of Crewdon and Wall is clear. Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s practice is similar. For example his series ‘Hustlers’ (1990 – 2):

Gives us the stock subject matter of traditional documentary in its portraits of outsider types …, an area of Hollywood often frequented by hustlers, drug users and transients. Yet the pictures are constructed and set up. With the help of an assistant, diCorcia carefully arranged each picture in advance and then began to look for a man off the street he could pay to appear in his photograph (Durden, 2014: 334).

This payment is a striking distinguishing feature of diCorcia’s practice. No doubt Crewdson and Wall pay their professional actors but in diCorcia’s case the:

disclosure of the monetary transaction between photographer and subject as part of each image’s title invites us to question the ethics of documentary, and leads us to think of the documentary transaction as a kind of prostitution, with subjects that can be bought like commodities (Durden, 2014: 334).

An example of such an image and title is ‘Eddie Anderson, 21 Years Old, Houston, Texas, $20’ (see fig. 3.). There is also a further dimension to this practice. For the making of these pictures diCorcia was in receipt of a fellowship from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). At that time:

NEA support of artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe was highly controversial, and diCorcia had to sign a document stating that he would not produce any “obscene” work while on his fellowship. He set up the whole negotiating procedure as a symbolic way of sharing his grant with people whose behavior would surely have been condemned by the censors. The titles always mention the name, the age and the origin of the model, as well as the amount paid. The staged situation interacts with the raw reality of the exchange of money, blurring the boundaries between documentary and fiction, yet preserving an authentic emotional charge (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, s.d)

This ‘authenticity and emotional energy’ is something diCorcia shares with Wall. For example Wall’s image ‘Mimic’ (1982) (see fig. 4.) depicts the moment of a racial slur. Thus both artists are societally engaged, with a raw emotional energy drawn from ‘the street’ or the depiction of real lived lives — hence the controversy with the NEA (above). Another example from Wall is ‘A Fight on the Sidewalk’ (1994) (see fig. 5.) In comparison, while Crewdson’s work could not be said to lack emotional depth it is of a kind that depends almost completely on the viewer’s interpretation of the elaborate tableau image.

References

Couturier, Elisabeth (2012) talk about contemporary photography. Paris: Flammarian

Durden, Paul (2014) Photography Today. New York: Phaidon

Hacking, Juliet (2012) Photography the Whole Story. London: Thames & Hudson

Phaidon (s.d) The world of Jeff Wall. [online] At: http://de.phaidon.com/agenda/photography/picture-galleries/2010/march/30/the-world-of-jeff-wall/?idx=1(Accessed on: 05.05.15)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (s.d) Eddie Anderson, 21 Years Old, from Houston, Texas, $20. [online] At: http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/266418 (Accessed on: 05.05.15)

List of Illustrations

Figure 1. Wall, Jeff (1996) Passerby [gelatine silver print] At: http://images.tate.org.uk/sites/default/files/styles/grid-normal-8-cols/public/images/jeff%20wall%20passerby.jpg?itok=tyWcxA_J (Accessed on: 05.05.15)

Figure 2. Wall, Jeff  (1998 – 2000) The Flooded Grave. [transparency in light box] At: http://de.phaidon.com/resource/124-5-the-flooded-grave.jpg (Accessed on: 05.05.15)

Figure 3. diCorcia, Philip-Lorca (1990) Eddie Anderson, 21 Years Old, Houston, Texas, $20 [chromogenic print] At: http://www.sfmoma.org/images/artwork/large/93.195_01_b02.jpg (Accessed on: 05.05.15)

Figure 4. Wall, Jeff (1982) Mimic. [Transparency in lightbox] At: http://images.tate.org.uk/sites/default/files/styles/grid-normal-8-cols/public/images/jeff%20wall%20mimic.jpg?itok=qtALRBSR (Accessed on: 05.05.15)

Figure 5. Wall, Jeff (1994) A Fight on the Sidewalk. [Cibachrome on aluminium box and fluorescent light] At: http://www.macba.cat/uploads/20131212/1803.jpg (Accessed on: 05.05.15)

 

Research point (iii)

Tags

Ansel Adams, Constructed image, Fabricated image, New Objectivity, New Topographics, Pictorialism, Setting the scene, Tableaux

Question: What is your main goal when making pictures? Do you think there’s anything wrong with making beauty your main goal? Why or why not?

It is difficult to know if there is a single main goal when I make pictures. For example my goal in taking portraits is to make a likeness of the person that may reveal something of themselves as an individual (see for example image 1 Gallery 1).

When taking still life images my main goal is different, less easily articulated but aesthetics or beauty is nearer the fore (see for example image 2 Gallery 1).

These two examples are from the distinct genres of portraiture and still life, and another is ‘street photography’ a third type of photography I practice along also with documentary photography (see for example image 3 Gallery 1). In this latter genre the aesthetics/beauty are perhaps at a point furthest remove from the still life photographs. In this scheme then the aesthetic/beauty quotient increases in a progression from ‘Documentary’ to ‘Street’ to ‘Portraiture’ to ‘Still Life’.

Perhaps there is something that encompasses all the above categories and analysis, and that is, simply, that a deciding factor when making a picture is the light – ‘good’ light (however that may be defined at the time) will induce me to try and take a picture, regardless of the genre any resulting photograph might fall into. It’s safe to say that in photography, light creatively used or captured (or abstracted in black and white photography) may be equated with beauty. The reason why making beauty my main goal is that it results in visually rich photographs even if the subject shown is an ugly one – a visually rich well executed photograph is almost by definition aesthetically pleasing and beautiful.

A more direct answer to the question “Do you think there’s anything wrong with making beauty your main goal?” is no, and the reason why is that, crucially, what is considered beautiful is not a constant over historical time. For example towards the end of the 19^th century there was ‘a concerted effort to establish photography as a creative art, which coalesced into the international movement known as Pictorialism’ (Edwards, 2006: 44). This movement answered in the affirmative the question asked by the critic Jabez Hughes in 1861who noted that photography was generally used as a document: ‘may it [photography] not aspire to delineate beauty too?’ (Bull, 2010: 124). However:

Hughes’ use of the term ‘beauty’ suggests the types of paintings then prevalent in the official ‘Academy’ exhibitions: attractive landscapes, idealised nudes, dramatically staged fictional, religious and historical tableau, and flattering portraits (Bull, 2010: 124)

The photograph ‘Fading Away’ (see fig. 1.) is exemplar of Pictorialism, a picture printed from five different negatives.

Pictoralist photographs ceased to be considered as adequate to that task of rendering the world. Ansel Adams (b. 1902) wrote of it in 1935:

Pictorialism discards the pure photographic technique and view-point in favour of superficial imitations of other graphic mediums. While a shallow imitation of the other art-forms was often obtained, their aesthetic substance was never achieved by the Camera, and Photography was thereupon vulnerable, and properly so, to depreciatory criticism and the frank denial of a position among the fine arts (Bate, 2009: 97).

The reinterpretation of the photography aesthetics has continued with movements such as the New Objectivity (Bate, 2009: 122) and the New Topographics. In relation to the latter it is worth noting that at the influential ‘New Topographics’ exhibition in 1975 viewers ‘saw the photographs as shockingly stark and ugly’ (Soutter, 2013: 34). Yet 35 years later an essay on the subject is titled “New Topographics: photographs that find beauty in the banal” (O’Hagan, 2010). To paraphrase the adage: ‘beauty’ is in the eye of the photographer and maybe eventually in that of the beholder.

It might be thought that making beauty the goal would insulate the photographer from adverse criticism and condemnation (what, after all can be wrong with the pursuit of beauty?), but it is not so straightforward. A good example that illustrates the pitfalls of pursuing beauty as a goal in photography is that of documentary photographer Sabastiao Salgado. One critic quoted by Parvati Nair makes the point:

Salgado is far too busy with the compositional aspects of his pictures – with finding ‘grace’ and ‘beauty’ in the twisted forms of his anguished subjects. And this beautification of tragedy results in pictures that ultimately reinforce our passivity toward the experience they reveal. To anesthetize tragedy is the fastest way to anaesthetize the feelings of those who are witnessing it. Beauty is a call to admiration, not action (Nair, 2011: 135).

The other side to this argument is that it is the beauty of the ‘visually rich well executed photograph’ (see above) that brings people to the galleries so that there is at least a possibility that they may make a compassionate response to the ‘anguished subjects’; without the photographs being made it’s possible that there would be no such possibility.

In conclusion beauty may always be a goal in photography because a photograph made with no aesthetic sense or style, even if the subject of the image is beautiful, is ugly.

Gallery 1

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

References

Bate, David (2009) Photography: The Key Concepts. New York: Berg

Bull, Stephen (2010) Photography. London: Routledge

Edwards, Steve (2006) Photography. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Nair, Parvati (2011) A Different Light. The Photography of Sebastiao Salgado. London: Duke University Press

O’Hagan, Sean (2010) ‘New Topographics: photographs that find beauty in the banal’ In: The Guardian [online] At: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/feb/08/new-topographics-photographs-american-landscapes (Accessed on: 01.05.15)

Soutter, Lucy (2013) Why art photography? London: Routledge

List of Illustrations

Figure 1. Robertson, Henry Peach (1858) Fading Away At: http://media-3.web.britannica.com/eb-media/69/59969-004-F0287A4E.jpg (Accessed on: 01.05.15)

Research point (ii)

Tags

Constructed image, Fabricated image, Gregory Crewdson, psychological, Setting the scene, Tableaux

Question: Do you think Crewdson succeeds in making his work ‘psychological’? What does this mean?

Yes, Crewdson undoubtedly succeeds in this by means of his use of lighting, colour and composition. The lighting is cinematic and leaves the viewer in no doubt that the scene is staged. Perhaps a better word to describe the looking at a Crewdson image is ‘witnessing’, because there is a sense of something that has happened or is just about to happen. What that something is is never made clear, there is never a straightforward cause and effect relationship in evidence. This absence forces the imagination of the viewer to engage with the composition. This combination of strong composition and imaginative interpretation adds up the images being described as ‘psychological’.  Thus an American critic can say of Crewdson’s work:

He’s digging through the ruins of 5.00 A.M., excavating the dark, mouldering remnants of Ronald Regan’s sunlit morning in America; he’s mapping and measuring the tumbled down cellar walls of our New Jerusalem, our City on a Hill, our New World, everything that, almost before we the people were born, got corrupted and shoddy and old so fast and turned the American dream into the American nightmare. And like any nightmare, his pictures seem to have no beginning or end (Banks, 2008).

An example of the psychological nature of the compositions is the image ‘Untitled (Ophelia), 2001’ (see fig. 1.). Crewdson when interviewed says of this photograph:

That was an image that captivated me for years, I can’t quite say why, but at some point I moved forward with that image and we built a living room in a sound stage … (Gregory Crewdson’s Photo Alchemy, 2006).

In this same interview Crewdson says of the photograph ‘Untitled (north by northwest)’ (see fig. 2):

What I’m very, very interested in is a moment that hovers between the before and after, a moment that is unresolved … and necessarily the ultimate meaning needs to remain a mystery for myself or else it wouldn’t be as interesting (Gregory Crewdson’s Photo Alchemy, 2006).

Perhaps the image that is most clearly psychological in nature is ‘Untitled, 2001’ (see fig.3.), which shows parts of a house in cross section and a young man with his arm pushed below the floor boards seeking to find something. Crewdson and others have discussed this image in relation to the fact that Crewdson’s father was a psychoanalyst who worked from a clinic attached to the family home so that growing up Crewdson was acutely aware of the existence of unseen psychological terrain, and that there were methods available to traverse it (for example see Gregory Crewdson’s Photography Capturing a Movie Frame, 2012).

References

Banks, Russell (2008) ‘Gregory Crewdson: Beneath the Roses’ In: Crewdson Beneath the Roses.  New York: Harry N. Abrams. pp. 6 -10

Gregory Crewdson’s Photo Alchemy, [online] NPR (2006), 7 mins At: http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=5157819&m=5157872 (Accessed on: 28.04.15)

Gregory Crewdson’s Photography Capturing a Movie Frame [online] You Tube (2012), 27 mins At: https://youtu.be/S7CvoTtus34 (Accessed on: 23.04.15)

List of Illustrations

Figure 1. Crewdson, Gregory (2001) Untitled (Ophelia) At: http://media.npr.org/programs/day/features/2006/jan/crewdson/blurb200_lg-c86b253cd252456191738775d4761b69ee969203.jpg (Accessed on: 28.04.15)

Figure 2. Crewdson, Gregory (2001) Untitled (north by northwest) At: http://media.npr.org/programs/day/features/2006/jan/crewdson/car_lg-b47e1a2f56d59fd0cf73976d398f0c4f2d27fa3c.jpg (Accessed on: 28.04.15)

Figure 3. Crewdson, Gregory (2001) Untitled, 2001 At: http://gagosian.vaesite.net/__data/909d8622e98277ab6e441c2c2ac08519.jpg (Accessed on: 28.04.15)

 

Research point (i)

Tags

aesthetic beauty, Constructed image, Edward Hopper, Fabricated image, Garry Winogrand, Gregory Crewdson, Jeff Wall, Setting the scene, Tableaux

Question: Do you think there is more to this work than aesthetic beauty?

Gregory Crewdson (b. 1962) says of his work that:

For me, first and foremost is to make a beautiful picture, but if it’s a purely aesthetic experience it is not good enough, …it needs to be undercut with something psychological, or dangerous, desirous or fearful (Gregory Crewdson’s Photography Capturing a Movie Frame, 2012).

So a different way of asking the above question is: does Crewdson succeed in his aim to add more to his work than aesthetic beauty? The word most often associated with Crewdson’s photographs is ‘cinematic’, and a look at even a small sample of his work makes this attribution understandable (for example see fig. 1. and 2.). The critic David Travis said of Garry Winogrand’s photographs:

Sometimes they are mere sight gags: at other times they are extraordinary scenes that the most gifted film director could hardly have imagined on his own. The world for Winogrand was too chaotic to comprehend fully, but too rich to reinvent as small , dumb staged events (Travis, 2003: 91)

Crewdson’s work stands in opposition to this description of Winogrand’s practice . Each photograph in any series is a scene from Crewdson’s imagination that has been elaborately staged using lighting techniques most often associated with cinema, and that require large crews (up to forty people). The resulting photographs are rich in detail, and display the ambiguity and drama of the American everyday; there are ‘ideas of beauty, sadness, alienation, and desire’ alongside ‘something that speaks of hope’ (Banks, 2008). Contributing to this sense is the fact that the pictures do not hide the fact that they are staged, it is something that the viewer is immediately aware of and this property distinguishes Crewdson’s practice from other tableaux artists, for example Jeff Wall. A comparison of Jeff Wall’s ‘Mimic’ (Wall, 1982; see fig. 3.) with Crewdson’s ‘Untitled’ (Crewdson, 2004; see fig 4.) clearly illustrates this difference.

In light of the above it is not surprising that Crewdson has named the artist Edward Hopper (b. 1882) as among his influences (Crewdson, 2008). In this regard the painting by Hopper titled ‘Gas’ (Hopper, 1940; see fig. 5.) is worth considering:

A dusk covered road curves into dark woods. There’s just a solitary guy there, doing something to one of the red pump. He looks as if he’s about to close everything down for the night – it doesn’t seem likely anyone will come by at this hour. But something, surely, has just happened or is about to happen. That’s the thing about Hopper: anything can happen, especially nothing (Dyer, 2005: 196).

Although the critic above does not reference Crewdson in his discussion of Hopper’s influence on American photographers, nevertheless it is easily appreciated that people in Hopper’s and Crewdson’s images share the state of being ‘stranded between moments’ (Dyer, 2005: 198), and that Crewdson shares Hopper’s fondness for what he called ‘in-between moments’ (Dyer, 2005: 199). This property among many others gives to Crewdson’s often complex work something more that aesthetic beauty.

References

Banks, Russell (2008) ‘Gregory Crewdson: Beneath the Roses’ In: Crewdson Beneath the Roses.  New York: Harry N. Abrams. pp. 6 -10

Crewdson, Gregory (2008) ‘Under the Influence’ In: Aperture 190 pp. 78 -89

Dyer, Geoff (2005) The Ongoing Moment. London: Vintage

Gregory Crewdson’s Photography Capturing a Movie Frame [online] You Tube (2012), 27 mins At: https://youtu.be/S7CvoTtus34 (Accessed on: 23.04.15)

Travis, David (2003) At the Edge of the Light. Thoughts on Photography and Photographers, on Talent and Genius. Boston: David R. Godine

List of Illustrations

Figure 1. Crewdson, Gregory (2003-2005) untitled from the series “Beneath the Roses” At: https://files.nyu.edu/jp1961/public/images/gregory-crewdson1.jpg (Accessed on: 23.04.15)

Figure 2. Crewdson, Gregory (2003-2005) untitled from the series “Beneath the Roses” At: https://files.nyu.edu/jp1961/public/images/gregory-crewdson-19.jpg (Accessed on: 23.04.15)

Figure 3. Wall, Jeff (1982) Mimic. At: http://images.tate.org.uk/sites/default/files/styles/grid-normal-8-cols/public/images/jeff%20wall%20mimic.jpg?itok=qtALRBSR (Accessed on: 23.04.15)

Figure 4. Crewdson, Gregory (2004) Untitled. At: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/gregory-crewdson-untitled-46 (Accessed on: 23.04.15)

Figure 5. Hopper, Edward (1940) Gas [oil on canvas] At: http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=80000 (Accessed on: 23.04.15)

Project 1 Exercise

Tags

'Goodfellas', Constructed image, Fabricated image, Martin Scorsese, Scorsese, Setting the scene

The scene (The Long Take: Goodfellas, 2009) from Martin Scorsese’s film ‘Goodfellas’ (1990) says much about the main character – that he is brash with a hail-fellow-well-met attitude to all he meets; he is treated well, with respect, as a VIP; the impression is given that this treatment rests on the money he pays to ensure it.

The ‘clues’ are conveyed both visually and in the dialogue. At the beginning the first of many exchanges of dollar bills occurs as the character explains to his girlfriend the convenience of paying someone to watch his car parked on the street; the queue on the street to enter the cabaret is avoided by again paying a doorman to allow them access by way of a shortcut though the kitchens; as they walk through the kitchens the character is recognised and has a good word for all. Once in the night club he greets the manager as a friend and a table is immediately ordered to be brought specially for the couple; the table is placed out in front of the rest of the audience. While the table is being set up the voice of the manager can be heard commiserating with another customer: “I know you’re waiting for a table…”. This accentuates the special treatment received and reinforces the ‘skipping the queue’ entitlement at the beginning of the scene. Once the two waiters and manager have installed the newly situated table it becomes clear from the dialogue that more money has been handed out. Guests at another table send over a bottle of wine, the wine is of such worth that the waiter shows the bottle ensuing that the generosity of the gift is appreciated, the manager indicating those who sent it.

References

The Long Take: Goodfellas [film scene online] ( 2009) 3 mins At: https://youtu.be/OJEEVtqXdK8 (Accessed on: 20.04.15)