Relates my personal and professional experience with movie image recording devices from early memories of my father’s 8mm film camera through most of the video formats to my smartphone.
All the parts in the book come from the one digital video camera, a JVC GR-X5AA. Accordion binding. 8 single-sided pages including cover. 23 x 31cm

“For me, the moving image is linked to my father, documenting our childhood with an 8mm film camera. I inherited his passion for chronicling and started filming in Super8 in the early eighties, while in New York. It became part of my artistic work, meshing images to stage or installation performance, and screen works.

I remembered the first video camera I saw was in the dance studio in the early seventies. The camera was separated from the recorder, and the entire set up was so heavy that it was fixed on a trolley in order to record our classes or rehearsals. In the mid-eighties, I got my first video camera, Sony CCD-V8. It was ‘portable’, although quite bulky and about 3kilos with batteries and charger. I carried it on a world-tour working with Theatre de la Mandragore…  In 1989, we performed in the Hong Kong festival, which gave me the opportunity to buy the new Sony Hi8 3CCD-camcorder. A bit more compact and definitely better quality. 

Formats changed, and the sizes of cassettes and cameras diminished, while the resolution of the images increased, from VHS to Super VHS, Betamax, U-Matic, Betacam, then digital8 and mini-DV. We had to digitise the content in order to edit it. I abandoned cassettes altogether around 2010, for HD video that stores digital files directly on either internal l memories or cards. These last few years, I use my smartphone more and more. It combines photo and video cameras with pretty good quality. All the parts in this book come from the one digital video camera, a JVC GR-X5AA”