Observation:Lumière Brothers

I really love old cinema.  I've been watching on YouTube the old Lumière Brothers short films, some of the first movies ever shot.

There's this one haunting moment I'd never noticed before: a photographer crossing a gang-way from a train I suppose (the Lumière's really liked shooting crowds in motion), carrying a great boxy camera, maybe a Gennert Montauk or something.  

He pauses, and he looks directly at the cinema camera as if seeing some strange new beast.

Here is a thing that changes everything.

Towards the end of the same short film, another photographer tips his hat to the movie-camera with a broad joyous smile.

There's something hypnotizing to me about these ghostly films, these people long dead in a breathless flirtation with being captured in motion, a resounding shout of affirmation that we are moving faster and faster, believing there is somewhere to go, someplace that we arrive.