Monocled Alchemist

Article published in Photography, December 1968

Colours Of The Infinite | 2001 A Space Odyssey | Scenes from the astonishing final sequence of the STANLEY KUBRICK MGM Cinerama production ‘2001 A Space Odyssey’.

It is over thirty years since Man Ray began experiments with photographic solarization as a means of self expression. His work in black-and-white had prepared the way when advances in colour photography made similar techniques possible in that medium, and readers of the journal Colour Photography—now amalgamated with PHOTOGRAPHY magazine—may remember an article published in 1964 in which Paris photographer Alex Kovaleff discussed his methods of producing controlled colour solarizations. The dye transfer print, colour masked transparencies and the use of filtered Infra Red Aero Ektachrome are now among several other means used to produce colour derivations and these—when applied as in Richard Avedon’s widely circulated set of Beatle posters—have virtually become a new and popular art form.

Colours Of The Infinite | 2001 A Space Odyssey

Developments in the art of the cinema are, as a rule, the province of our companion journal Movie Maker, which has already reviewed ‘2001’, so the actual story of the film need not be outlined here other than to say that it concerns a space voyage that takes the leading character towards the planet Jupiter and on into strange regions of the infinite.

Producer director Stanley Kubrick (who also designed the special photographic effects) went to work for Look magazine as a photographer immediately upon leaving high school, and the four years he spent with them gained him experience in the techniques of still photography that he has used to greater purpose since than probably any other director in films. An example of this was reported in an interview he gave to American Cinematographer, in which he described how he had overcome the problem of obtaining sufficient depth of field when filming the miniature models used to represent space ships, by reducing the aperture of his motion picture camera to pin-hole size and giving a four second exposure to every frame instead of just using more light, which would have spoiled the illusion of a single point light source in an airless vacuum.

Intersteller void

I found the film an entertaining and often disturbing visual treat; the most overwhelming attack upon my eyes and ears that I have yet experienced in the cinema. Kubrick makes no concessions to his audience, especially in the final sequence, which most reviewers seemed to find incomprehensible. But how can anyone portray the powers that have presumably watched over the destiny of this planet since its creation in the interstellar void?

Great Artists have supplied their own interpretations down the centuries and it may be that through the medium of colour film used to provide semi-abstract images, Kubrick has succeeded as well as most. Few details are available as to the actual mechanics of the special effects in his last sequence (from which our illustrations are taken) but similar treatments will long have been familiar to readers of the photographic press. Their impact when enlarged to fill the giant Cinerama screen can only be gauged from a seat in the auditorium.