Analogical Location of the Past
 (Institut Lumière & Julen Knez)

The utopia of Auguste and Louis Lumière to create a mass spectacle with moving images materialised at the end of the 19th century. What photography, limited to capturing static moments, had not achieved, cinema made possible by incorporating the dimension of time into a three-dimensional photographic representation (1). This breakthrough led to the definition of cinema as the Seventh Art (2).

A printed image commemorates the birth of cinema in front of the Institut Lumière in Lyon (3), where the remains of the old Lumière factory still stand. The photograph, printed on transparent material, is one of the frames from the 1895 film La Sortie de l’Usine Lumière. This photographic installation is an example of a “functional space ” (4), as defined by Gordon Cullen in his book Townscape.

The internet has enabled the exploration of different authors and artistic experiences that merge images from various historical periods. A notable example is Julien Knez (5), who photographs historical images while holding them in his hand at the exact location where they were initially taken. Through this method, he aligns the profiles of past buildings with present-day structures, offering an evocative perspective on events such as the Paris Commune of 1871 (6) or the May 1968 (7) protests.