ON THE SET : Click! Click! Click!

While the day-to-day reality of movie sets is that they tend to be the most boring places on earth, they also exist, as does film itself, on the level of myth and mystery. These are, after all, the places where dreams are manufactured, and getting a glimpse of life on the set is like having a peek behind the scenes of the oracle at Delphi. Actors simultaneously in and out of character, directors in the grip of the muse, surreal juxtapositions of fantasy and reality, they all happen here. Though practitioners as legendary as Cartier-Bresson have taken turns as set photographers, recording what goes on when the camera is rolling and when it’s not, their work from cinema’s trenches has not always been sufficiently appreciated. In a bid to change that, a professional organization has been formed, and from March 30 through May 11, the G. Ray Hawkins Gallery in Santa Monica will be hosting an exhibition called “Single Frames: The Inauguration of the Society of Motion Picture Still Photographers.” Arresting, disturbing, unexpected, these images manage to fascinate even when the films they serviced didn’t even come close.