A. Fleischer, L'Empreinte et le tremblement. Ecrits sur le cinéma et la photographie 2, suivi de Faire le noir - Art and Visual Culture

French Literature Reviews - 2026

A. Fleischer, L'Empreinte et le tremblement. Ecrits sur le cinéma et la photographie 2, suivi de Faire le noir
Art and Visual Culture

Alain Fleischer, L'Empreinte et le tremblement. Ecrits sur le cinéma et la photographie 2 suivi de Faire le noir, Galaade Editions, "Essais", 2009.

  • Number of pages: 520 pages
  • Format: 14 x 22
  • Binding: Paperback
  • Price: 24.90 €
  • EAN: 9782351760604

Publisher's description:

Making and producing images is the power of photography and cinema: capturing the elusive, drawing out from the visible that which is initially present only in the imagination, that which persists or is transformed. Still and movie cameras are magical objects that endow those who possess them and know how to use them with the power to stage the world and its beings according to their fancy.

L'Empreinte et le tremblement.

La Belle et la Bête by Jean Cocteau. A film which, in the guise of an exemplary tale, stages the seductive gaze and analyzes it across all works of this art form that never ceases to look at us in order to seduce us: cinema. Seduction through the gaze, the voice, the written word, or the body: cinema raises the question of how to represent, film, and stage body and soul, matter and idea. And the movie camera, the still camera, or now the mobile phone, are the magical objects that allow us to capture and reproduce images.

Following Laboratoires du temps, frame by frame, from cinema to photography, architecture to music, literature to dance, Alain Fleischer once again blends the arts and reinvents his itinerary in L'Empreinte et le tremblement.

Faire le noir

In cinema, everything begins in the dark. A darkness that imposes its fleeting lights and discontinuous time. Darkness disturbs, darkness frightens. From the darkened theater to the city, Alain Fleischer plunges into the infinite circulation of images that characterizes our modernity. Faire le noir, a book currently out of print and eagerly awaited by film students, constitutes the second part of L'Empreinte et le tremblement.

Table of Contents:

The Body at the Mercy of Images
Producing/Reproducing
The Frozen Wave
A Few Nights in the Night
The Image Taken Literally
The Idiot Filmmaker
Returns, Detours, Contours
By Way of an Epilogue
Faire le noir
Improbable Movements: A Lexicon, a Work

Alain Fleischer engages deeply with the theoretical and aesthetic intersections of cinema, photography, and the broader visual arts. Building on his multidisciplinary explorations that span literature, music, and architecture, the author examines how optical technologies mediate our perception of reality. By investigating the mechanisms of the gaze, staging, and modern visual reproduction, the volume addresses fundamental questions about representation and the ways artistic mediums capture both material existence and the ephemeral nature of human experience in contemporary culture.

This work serves as a valuable resource for students of film, cultural studies, and modern aesthetics who seek a nuanced understanding of visual media. The inclusion of Faire le noir further enriches the volume by probing the primal conditions of cinematic projection and the psychological impact of darkness in the age of ubiquitous images. Fleischer offers an insightful critical framework that bridges traditional artistic practices with the evolving dynamics of modern spectatorship and media theory.