Ernie Gehr’s CARNIVAL OF SHADOWS at MoMA is a reconciliation between the old and the new, and a celebration of the formal magic of the moving image.

The main piece in the exhibit is a five-channel video projected onto a large wall. Each channel takes for its source an early 20th century shadowgraph. The shadowgraphs were essentially long strips of paper run through vertical black bars. This interlacing effect would produce the illusion of movement of the figures drawn on the strips. Each shadowgraph in CARNIVAL contains its own narrative sequence; like Gulliver’s Travels, often the comedy or fantasy narratives that were common in early, simplistic animation.

Gehr takes six of these shadowgraphs and projects them next to one another, such that the illusion of horizontal movement continues from one screen to the other, from one black bar to the other. This, along with the many other ways Gehr digitally manipulates and abstracts the shadowgraphs (jumping between vertical lines, decoupling the top half of a figure from the bottom, etc…) leads to the total loss of any narrative cohesion. Instead, we get an endless parade of shadows marching forever rightward (or for the 20 minute runtime of the piece). CARNIVAL OF SHADOWS isn’t a celebration of cinema’s power to tell a narrative; its rejoice is in something much simpler; that inanimate images can be brought to life at all.`   

The piece becomes a celebration of the moving image itself. In its abstractions, and in its size (too large to take in at once), Gehr asks you to participate in the carnival, rather than simply admire it from a distance. I don’t expect that anyone stays for the full 20 minutes. In fact, in the time that I was there, most people stayed for less than one minute. But that struck me much like an actual carnival, where people are so overwhelmed by all the sensual pleasures that surround them, that their attention can only be held for a moment. CARNIVAL OF SHADOWS doesn’t seem to mind. I think it wants to be brief so it can remain delightful. In that dark room, against the wall lit only by the digital projectors, you can walk by and become one of the shadows brought to life by the magic of cinema, marching in their parade.