I’ve used the term ‘theatre’ in a lot of the above description of Fortuny’s activities, but it shouldn’t take much imagination to see what effect Fortuny has had on contemporary lighting and also cinematic studio design. But – not only this. Fortuny created designs for fabric, patented carbon-pigment photographic paper, advised Klimt on the use of gold in his painting, created set design and lighting effects, photographed, played music, researched the history of fabric and created pleated silks inspired by Egyptian Design that later influenced Issey Miyake’s work in the 1970’s and onwards – and, invented many domestic lighting units that are now present in their modern day forms in every household. His wood and metal table lamp of 1929 is the ancestor to Pixar’s dancing lamp.

By the way - every lamp in this article outside of my two are designed by Fortuny - go back and have a look at the wit, intelligence and inventiveness of the man.

There’s a lot more than this but the point of bringing Fortuny into an article about cinematographic lighting technique is the issue of noticing how light behaves and acting on that recognition. Many distinguished cinematographers and gaffers create lights to do specific jobs – Jordan Cronenweth’s famed Croniecone used on films like Blade Runner are a case in point – but, can you imagine a moment perhaps in the 17th Century, or the 6th Century – or maybe way back in our collective pasts where some bright person noticed and became transfixed by the way light bounces, reflects, glows, or passes through a medium like water or smoke and has an epiphany that is then translated into a practical act: for those of us that work with light, that most insubstantial but most powerful of materials I think it helps to know that we exist within a tradition that goes far beyond the cinema that we know and love