Hand-held cameras enabled a new autobiographical cinema of live lovemaking

Evidence

The New York Miseries became a two-hour silent work, first shown publicly in July 1968 as Kodak Ghost Poems. The definitive self-portrait of the male, heterosexual artist as a young boho with a movie camera, it was notable for its lush texture, lyrical idealization of life on the Lower East Side, lust for light, and graphic carnality. Without recourse to a tripod, albeit with a remarkably steady camera, Noren managed to film his lovemaking as it was happening. “Basically what I want to do is record my life,” Noren told Jud Yalkut in a 1969 interview. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1410

Categorization

• XREF: The light hand-held camera as a material precondition for an entire cinematic form strengthens the book’s conditions-not-genius argument.
• SEED: Angle: the 16mm Bolex as a ‘cheap rent’ technology — what could be filmed only because the equipment cost nothing and required no crew.