Word: photograph
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...unlike the other characters in Blow-Up, the photographer is not among the living dead in Antonioni's sterile London. Antonioni's photographer is in limbo, precariously balanced on the borderline between submergence in the frenzied non-involvement around him, and commitment to reality. Essentially weak, he inevitably succumbs to the daily temptations of his life and profession. For example, in the middle of examining the most important pictures he has ever taken, he allows himself to take part in a mini-orgy with two teen-age would-be models; on his way to the scene of the crime...
...examining the nature of photography, Antonioni carefully injects another theme, the more basic conflict between illusion and reality. The first scene of Blow-Up introduces the photographer as he leaves a flop-house where he spent the night; we learn that he had gone to photograph the sick old men who sleep there. This personal preference for social realism over fashion proves the photographer dedicated. But in photographing the tragedy and problems of other people, the photographer in Blow-Up substitutes this for an understanding and eventual solution of his own problems. The reality of the photographs becomes the photographer...
This small conscious realization on the photographer's part gives his life more value, and enables Antonioni to have him finally reject the behavior of his friends. The ending establishes this conclusively: in the park, returning from his unsuccessful attempt to find and photograph the corpse, he sees the white-faced youths standing around a tennis court, watching two of their group "play" tennis with an imaginary ball and imaginary rackets. The "ball" is knocked over the fence and the group looks toward the photographer to retrieve it. He hesitates momentarily, then picks up the the imaginary ball and throws...
...done by the nine Japanese reporters based in Peking. There are always more fresh posters each morning than all of them together can track down in a single day, and Peking's frigid winter is not conducive to street-corner translating. Result: some of the Japanese now photograph promising posters with their Polaroid cameras, then return to the warmth of their offices to translate them. Curious to see the mysterious poster warriors at work, one Japanese correspondent prowled Peking with a flashlight night after night. Although he was very diligent and although the posters were invariably new and fresh...
...Carlo casinos, her nude swims in the Mediterranean, her dietetic secrets (one meal a day, fortified with a pre-bed glass of milk mixed with ten drops of iodine). Roads, perfumes, sundaes were named after her, and if a suitor was lacking, she was not above dredging up a photograph of some deceased Hindu prince and releasing it to the press as her latest marital prospect...