The Projectionists

"Beginning in 1992 with Artaud: Blows & bombs, Stephen Barber has quietly, independently forged one of the most singular and enriching bodies of work in contemporary writing. In his latest book, The Projectionists: Eadweard Muybridge and the future projections of the moving image (Diaphanes), Barber tells the largely unknown story of Muybridge as the first ever moving-image projectionist, retracing the 1891 tour of European cities in which Muybridge first projected his work to audiences of royalty, artists and scientists, none of whom had seen moving images before, visiting many of the auditoria which have miraculously survived. Barber’s own obsession with the moving image began as a teenager in Yorkshire, where he worked as a relief projectionist and, through encounters with projectionists around the world, the book is also an interrogation of the solitary and gradually vanishing occupation of the cinema projectionist as embodied by the enigmatic figure of Muybridge himself."

"This is one of those rare books, a very readable and erudite academic account of the innovative filmmakers and projectionists Barber believes should be more prominent as players in the history event of the arts.“