[Summer 2025]

Hybridity in Action
by Florence Le Blanc

[EXCERPT]

Although interactions between photography and animation have evolved since the early twentieth century, recent upheavals in the media world (digital era, social networks, artificial intelligence, and so on) are forcing us to revise how we view images and to realize that reciprocity between the two disciplines is ongoing. Since its invention, photography has been associated with the power to attest to reality, and this is still closely linked to its definition. Conversely, animation is defined by the idea of creating movement that doesn’t exist in reality. In animated films that incorporate photography, the combination of the real and the constructed creates effects of mise en abyme, metafiction, even surrealism. Here, I take a look at recent examples of this intersection of media produced in Quebec, as well as influential past works. Although the animation of photographs may serve a wide variety of purposes, I will concentrate on works in which this kind of hybridity helps to redefine the codes of fiction.

Because these works are hybrid in nature, they are related as much to the visual arts as to film, as can be seen from the diversity of their production and dissemination contexts. This form is often listed under the category of “collage films,” which are not necessari­ly animated. Beyond collage, filmmakers may employ other strategies to incorporate photographic images into an animated narrative.

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[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 129 – FROM CONTINENT TO CONTINENT ]
[ Complete article in digital version available here: Hybridity in Action]

Artist and researcher Florence Le Blanc has completed a doctorate in which she explored the hybrid forms generated by intersections between photography and film. She teaches art history at the Université de Sherbrooke and history of animation at Université Laval. She explores the image as a point of transition among time, memory, and vision.