ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the culture of image and fantasy, the mix of fantasy and illusion, delusion and desire. Antonioni's portrayal of the city reflects a pattern of development of the documentary movement and its characteristic concern rooted in post-war realism. London of the 1960s was one of the places in which 'image culture' both appeared and was celebrated as such, especially to those observing from the outside. For Antonioni, English traditions seemed formed solely of outward signs and therefore easy to overturn. In Blow-up, Antonioni set out to expose the barrenness of swinging London. Antonioni's film borrows from Cortazar's story the idea of a crime discovered by making a photographic enlargement. In Antonioni's version, the photographer disappears into the game of imagination, a game played without a ball, for no other purpose than play. The opening of Blow-up intercuts between hallucinatory 'swinging London' and the earlier social documentary kitchen sink dramas.
