A Curious Event at the Natural History Station, 1947
(photo by Stanley Kubrick)
Having been fascinated by Vsevolod Pudovkin’s and other Russian filmmaker’s cinematic and dramaturgic techniques, Kubrick applies the widely know alienation effect used in Contrustivist photography and theater in staging a love scene in a deserted subway station near the Museum of Natural History.
In this photograph, Kubrick allows different levels of information to enter the scene psychological, semiotic and cinematic in nature. The photo depicts a young couple- in actuality Kubrick’s girlfriend and future wife Toba Metz, and a school chum- on the platform of a subway station that is significantly identified with a sign that reads “Natural History.” Kubrick installed artificial lighting in order to heighten the scene’s dramatic effect; his choice to reveal rather than conceal the lights source and its technical apparatus is in line with theatrical methods of alienation that were used by such artists as Bertolt Brecht.
Evidence of such technique shows the young photographer’s highly informed and aesthetically relation concepts of photography and stage direction.
