portraits_in_motion_1_0.jpg
Volker Gerling wanted to do something with portraits and time lapse photography - capturing the essence of a person in twelve seconds or so, rather than just a split one. So he experimented with taking thirty of so frames within this timeframe - with intriguing and emotional results on just his first night out. Now he does his work and also spends a great deal of time on long walks (weeks at a time) across Germany, and other locations, meeting people to show them his mobile art exhibition, taking donations and finding new subjects.
At the PuSh Festival he talked about his process and showed his photographic flipbooks which animate these portraits into motion. His particular technique is quite mesmerizing. His process sounds a little tenuous and it is only because he is such an exceptional photographer that this technique becomes more than just a gimmick. There was a lot of laughter in the audience and also sighs and murmurs of how beautiful the images were.
He is not only a portrait photographer but also increases the length between shots to document things like an apartment building at night, the passage of the moon across the sky behind a cathedral or the view from his own window over an entire year. Each of these sequences also becomes a flipbook.
He once spent 21 hours in a men's bathroom, photographing the configuration of men at the urinals. Again, it sounds like a gimmick which would be unlikely to translate into art, but watching the short flipbook is an unusual experience -- both funny and very moving.