The cult film Blow-Up is a unique exploration of the mysteries and ambiguities inherent in photographs. A new book, Antonioni’s Blow-Up by Philippe Garner and David Alan Mellor, evokes Antonioni’s investigations of this central theme through a telling sequence of original on-set stills and the crucial blow-ups themselves, while the authors’ essays provide fresh insights into the cultural and artistic context in which the film was made in the spring and summer of 1966.

Philippe Garner explains: “How many of us saw Blow-Up when it came out and dreamed of being a fashionable photographer? With the passage of time though, Antonioni’s masterful film seems less concerned with the superficial glamour of the photographer’s world; the film’s tenacious hold on the imaginations of successive generations depends, rather, on its oblique, ultimately unresolved investigation of the frequently ambivalent and elusive nature of photographs and their curious ability to leave us questioning, and doubting, the truths that they might claim to record.

In 2006, as a 40th anniversary celebration of the making of Blow-Up, I co-curated with David Alan Mellor an exhibition of original stills and the original blow-ups made by Don McCullin. The exhibition, at The Photographers’ Gallery in London, was very well received and we determined to translate the ephemeral event into a book that would constitute a lasting record of the exhibition’s visual narrative and would provide us with the opportunity to publish our detailed researches into so many aspects of the film’s creation and context.

It is our hope that this book will engage and stimulate others fascinated by the enigmatic parallel universe of still and moving photographic images.”