Hide And Seek (2005, Peissig)
Changes in the visual language of the everyday can seem imperceptible, normalized to the point where many fail to fully register the leaps that can occur within the span of 5 or so years. The sheer omnipresence of a visual format: security camera footage, high definition television news, iPhone photography and so on, can make it so that any consideration of both their technological development and formal qualities recede because they have been so efficiently folded into the fabric of the modern media landscape. It is perhaps only by looking at the past do we register these visual changes and the quirks inherent to different video formats, with the low res imperfections and textures of early DV becoming representative of an entire era. This is a lineage Jia Zhangke attempts to trace in his latest film Caught By the Tides (2024), which is partially composed of leftover footage Jia has shot over the years. As the film progresses across two decades the visual fabric evolves, moving from 35mm film to mini DV before eventually landing in the present. The image format Jia chooses to embody the present day is less so one concerned with resolution but aspect ratio, as the film moves towards a fixation with vertical video and TikTok, or Douyin, in China, which has evolved into an essential cultural force, driving both expression and commerce.
It wouldn’t be hard to argue that the dominant image of the past decade is the vertical image, which, even more so than television, announces an immediate division from the formal language of cinema, turning the world on its side. The question then turns to how we arrived here, though the answer requires very little thought: it’s the damn phone. The history of the moving image usually comes in tandem with the development of new technology, with the dissemination of various innovations forming a trickle-down effect that eventually reaches the consumer. The vertical image, however, has an important distinction as perhaps being the first visual medium whose existence was precipitated by Silicon Valley and Big Tech, and whose dissemination skipped the hands of professionals and went directly to the consumer. There is no D.W. Griffith or George Lucas for the smartphone video, the first people who bought the iPhone had as much input into the creation of its formal language as your mom did when she got her first smartphone.
Though smart phones came equipped to shoot in both portrait and landscape it became abundantly clear to most users that it was way more comfortable to hold your phone vertically when shooting video. In this regard convenience became a significant factor to the widespread dissemination of vertical video, as when you’re in the moment you tend to not have much time to think. There is hence, somewhat of a sense that by putting a video camera in everyone's pockets that the world has fully democratized image creation, allowing anyone to have the capacity to become a filmmaker. Likewise, platforms like YouTube and later TikTok capitalized on this same idea, circumventing the perennial problem plagued by studios and production houses, by not paying for their content.
Who the vertical image truly belongs to is a thornier issue but it’s important to break down how it operates formally in opposition to the horizontal image. Despite being able to hold the same amount of visual information, there is a persistent notion that horizontal images are typically deployed to show more. This is of course a consequence of peripheral vision, where our field of view immediately prioritizes the horizontal plane. Accordingly, vertical images have historically been used to restrict visual information, perhaps most evidently within portraits where the subject takes precedence over all else. It was maybe with a stroke of genius that director Joel Peissig and singer Imogen Heap decided to film the iconic video for song Hide and Seek (2005) in vertical, making it the first music video of its kind. The original principles of the vertical image still apply as Heap is constantly in portrait as light streams from all around. It is perhaps no wonder that an aspect ratio that prioritizes the human figure would become so popular in a decade so concerned with the presentation of the self.
Though what the vertical image also communicates is a sort of wide-scale philosophical shift in how we digest media. Artist Hito Steyerl in her essay In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Vertical Perspective (which I have referenced in maybe every article I’ve ever written), theorized that the dominant visual perspective of the world shifted from the 20th to the 21st century, from linear perspective, where navigation was determined by the idea of a horizon line, to a top-down perspective, as satellite technology reconfigured how we understand geography. Reality no longer became determined by what you could directly see as we seemingly had access to endless visual information that accurately sketched out the boundaries of our world. Likewise with the advent of the internet, information did not become solely restricted to print, as we gained access to perhaps the totality of human knowledge online. In the age of the free fall you are endlessly bombarded with images. Perhaps it makes sense that said images would be dropped down on you overhead from a vertical aspect ratio.
The shape of the smartphone also determined the omnipresence of the vertical image, with the ability of the vertical image to completely fill the screen and consume all attention becoming particularly attractive for social media companies. It is because of the smartphone’s vertical shape that UIs evolved to accommodate it, operating as a top-to-bottom scroll. Though it was Tumblr that first popularized the infinite scroll, providing no end to the content pushed up to your face. And with the infinite scroll the vertical image broke free from the confines of the aspect ratio, evolving into a never-ending strip. Perhaps because peripheral vision provides the feeling that there is an immediate end to your surroundings it is easier to buy that a vertical image seemingly has no stopping point. No one thinks there’s an end to the sky when they look up.
Where this all leads us is of course the creation of the first social media app that directly prioritized vertical video and endless scrolling: TikTok. The videos of TikTok less so resemble fully formed entities but discreet units in a never-ending chain as if we have finally achieved peak content. Though what’s curious to me is how many TikTok videos still feel like they share the same visual language of Imogen Heap: with various blank faces captured in portrait, undergoing their makeup routines, engaging in new discourses or trying every Taco Bell item in their cars. Though that’s not to say that there isn’t variety, and though social media companies have codified the formal qualities of the vertical image through UIs and algorithms, everyday users find new ways to disrupt and reimagine these platforms.