Eugenio Recuenco & Lotte Reiniger

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While revisiting fairy tale images from my old journal, I also came across these after the Alice In Wonderland series two posts ago. They're by Eugenio Recuenco, one of my favourite photographers who has done a fair amount of stunning, cinematographic editorials for Vogue, Vanity Fair and Madame Figaro, amongst others.

{Click on images for larger versions.}

Little Red Riding Hood

Beauty And The Beast

Snow White

The Princess And The Pea

Puss In Boots

The Pied Piper

Cinderella

Sleeping Beauty


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Recently, I also discovered Lotte Reiniger, a German silhouette animator I heard of in Cinema class at university, but never got around to checking out.

Inspired by shadow puppetry, all her animations are done using little more than black paper and backlighting. What's fascinating is how delicately articulated her animated characters are, and how nimbly they move. Some were constructed out of 25 to 50 separate pieces of paper held together by fine lead wire to facilitate more complex movements on camera. To add depth and dimension to the scenery, she also employed various shades of tissue paper and glass panes.

Lotte often likened filmmaking to ballet. "Film is movement. It’s the combination of curves and diagonals that gives ballet and animation their sweet tenderness and their striking directness."


Here are some of her short films from the 1950s.


Hansel and Gretel (1955)





Cinderella (1954)





The Little Chimney Sweep (1954)





The Three Wishes (1955)





Jack and the Beanstalk (1955)





The Art of Lotte Reiniger (Part 1)
This is a documentary about Lotte Reiniger and her animations.
Unfortunately, I can't find Part 2 on Youtube.
In this doco, you can see the amazing lightning precision of her hand
as she cuts her animated figures out of black paper.





"I believe in the truth of fairy tales more than
I believe in the truth in the newspaper."
- Lotte Reiniger