ABSTRACT
Numerous subjects in the areas of business and commerce provide the film camera with attractive views. As long as the cinematograph was presented as “the latest technological wonder,” cameramen focused less on the activities of workers than on the effect of “true-to-life” photographic reproductions of the powerful yet fleeting rise of steam and smoke (for example in Défournage du coke, 1896). Even the shots of locomotives rushing toward the camera, so popular in the early years, were less interesting because of their depiction of a technical wonder than the spatial effect they produced when projected onto the two-dimensional screen. 2
