Man on Wire

I was moved by what Philippe Petit says about the moment he stepped on the wire between the Twin Towers: while he was aware of the extreme danger, it was impossible not to take the step. The statement says much about the spirit of his endeavour: there is hubris, perhaps, but also a sense of humility; a knowledge of his own vulnerability and a willingness to put it on the line to create a moment of size, of poetry. It is the smallness of his figure against the skyscrapers that makes the event so remarkable.

9/11, though never explicitly mentioned, has an underpinning presence in this film: we see the Twin Towers in the process of construction, the great structural ribs - later so painfully exposed - erected with such optimism. I was reminded of the images of the 9/11 'jumpers'. Philippe Petit, of course, succeeds. I found this a strangely healing film.

There is a scene in the documentary where Petit carries his then girlfriend, Annie Allix, piggy-back across the practice wire. I was reminded of the day when a young funambule student called Jade did the same for me and thereby cured me of my fear of height. I was studying corde lisse, vertical rope, at the French national circus school, a place that took Circus more seriously than anywhere else I had been to. The heights at which I had to work were, accordingly, 'proper', but to me, mind-boggling. I developed crippling vertigo; the fear itself became fearful, for an aspiring aerialist like me it was akin to sickness.

One day Jade volunteered to carry me across his high-wire. I trusted his undeniable skill and confidence, and some of it must have rubbed off on me. That night I dreamt that I was piloting a small plane into an azure sky; the day after, I was able to put aside my fear. Incidentally, Jade himself was an obsessive admirer of Philippe Petit.

Falling Bodies

My own work for a change - this one is in progress. For a year I have been obsessively photographing people in freefall, in the studio. For most of that year, everyone seemed to think I was mad, but it never seemed impossible, just difficult - I used to worked in a circus where we would get up to much worse.

I don't want to explain in detail how it was done, just that the falls were 'proper' (some from more than 5 metre height); it was important to me that they were 'real' in the sense that real height had to be involved. I took the images on large-format film, never more then one per fall. This introduced a necessary element of chance into an otherwise very controlled situation.

It took some time to get it right: some of the images of 'normal' people (see the woman in orange) don't read so much as a fall - more like a hover. In the end I collaborated with a group of acrobats. I explained to them that I wanted their bodies to flail, explode with movement, to look crushed by gravity; so they improvised moves for the camera, some of them very challenging. The images yielded from that session look much more like falling.

I feel that this throws up some interesting questions about the real and the fake. I feel that, through a series of elaborations, I have arrived at a different kind of ‘real’.

Please come and see this work at my degree show on 9-14 June 09 at LondonMet in Whitechapel, for further details please go my website at http://www.annettehabel.com

Kleine Leapers

From http://kleineleapers.blogspot.com - a bunch of Klein re-enactments in Sweden. I would like to know more about it. Why water?

Yves Klein

Perhaps the best-known image of a fall, at least in the artworld, Yves Klein's 'Leap into the Void' from 1960. Although Klein fell into a tarpaulin, it must have been scary as hell, falling forward like that, and tarpaulin or not, the fall was real, crystallising a set of ideas in a physical act.

According to the write-up on the Centre Pompidou website, Klein was 'impregnating himself with the immaterial qualities of the void, so that he could transmit them to his artworks.' There is something so quixotic about this, in this sense similar to Kittinger, Bas Jan Ader, even Chaplin or Keaton. Everytime I see the image I oscillate between a sense of awe and wanting to laugh.

Joseph Kittinger

In 1960 the pilot Joseph Kittinger carried out what must surely be the ultimate fall. He travelled in a balloon to 102,800 feet (31,330 m) - the outer edge of the earth's atmosphpere - and then threw himself out into space. Eventually, at 18,000 feet (5,500 m) he opened a parachute, but most of the journey he spent in free fall.

It is said that, as he jumped, he was sure he would die; and that for him the most testing part was not the thought of death, or the physical pain, but the extreme loneliness at what is really the edge of the world. Even if I didn't know about the background to this image, I would guess that it portrays someone who is risking his life - survival does look unlikely.

In my opinion, the most stunning part is that he came down largely unscathed, took part in a number of similar adventures and is apparently still alive to date. Sometimes life really does tell the best stories - Münchhausen, eat your heart out.

Ordinary People

From The Times front page earlier this year, during the season of extremely high winds. What is it about falling, flying, being in mid-air that fascinates us so much?

There is a link between falling and mortality: angels and gods can fly and hover, but us mortals are slowly falling to our deaths. The hope is that somehow we will never hit the ground. Photography freezes a moment in time and creates an image of immortality. We all can hover.


Even worse than falling is being thrown, even if it is for the best.
(Metro front page, 5th of Feb this year.)

Catherine Yass/ The Human Cannon Ball

Catherine Yass's photographs taken out of a lift are well known. The blurred buildings, zooming past the camera, are also an image of falling - our falling.

This still from Yass's film 'High Wire' depicts a funambulist, a high wire walker. High wire walking is the last circus discipline left where performers still risk life and limb with no safety net, so we don't have to. The funambulist here is Didier Pasquette, one of the very few left in the world. During filming, he had to turn back after a few steps. Apparently it was too windy, but no explanation is given in the film or notes. Strangely, way this work encompasses failure as much as audacity.

I saw the human cannon ball perform his act at the Cornwall Show last year. Four counties clubbed together to bring him over from the States. I was very touched by his act. There is something strangely life-affirming about someone who will get himself shot 80 feet up, until he becomes literally a dot in the air - a truly pointless and heroic act.

I like the multi-exposure element of the photograph - it reminds me of Muybridge's horse shots - but it doesn't sufficiently convey the outrageousness and loneliness of the endeavour. Yass's image shows that element much better.

Bas Jan Ader 2

Bas Jan Ader let himself fall out of trees, off roofs, and into this canal. He also made himself cry in front of the camera. In his films the discomfort is very apparent. I like the tragic, melodramatic element in his deliberately hurting himself and not enjoying it, and somehow managing to make it look like an accident. He reminds me of a sad clown or a fallen aerialist. He eventually perished in a small boat on the ocean - only the boat was found - the final and ultimate misadventure.


A re-enactment of Bas Jan Ader's canal piece. It's a shame that the Serpentine is not as deep as the Amsterdam canals, but in a way this makes it almost funnier.