Over the years I’ve seen a number of photographs making use of scanners and photo-finish cameras and various multiple exposure techniques and never found them more than amusing novelties. But there is something rather more compelling about Adam Magyar’s stainless (video). Perhaps because video is essentially a transient experience, while in still images I want something deeper, that says more than ‘how clever’ or even ‘I wonder how he did it?’
You can see more of his other work – and it is impressive if largely not to my taste on his web site linked above, and learn much about Magyar’s ingenuity and perseverance in a feature ‘Einstein’s Camera’, which also includes the video along with other work.
I’m rather sceptical about any link with Einstein – and most other such claims made by artists – but that doesn’t detract from the work. Wikipedia has this quote from Arthur Eddington
Let us draw an arrow arbitrarily. If as we follow the arrow we find more and more of the random element in the state of the world, then the arrow is pointing towards the future; if the random element decreases the arrow points towards the past. That is the only distinction known to physics. This follows at once if our fundamental contention is admitted that the introduction of randomness is the only thing which cannot be undone. I shall use the phrase ‘time’s arrow’ to express this one-way property of time which has no analogue in space.
which might be more appropriate, but ‘Eddington’s Camera’ wouldn’t have the same attraction.
The ‘Medium‘ site on which this piece appears has some other articles that may be of interest, though on a quick look through I found no other significant photography. One of the site’s features is to tell you how long each will take to read. For ‘Einstein’s Camera’ it tells you ’22 minutes’.
Thanks to Peggy Sue Amison of the Sirius Arts Centre in Cork, Ireland for bringing this work to my attention by a post on Facebook. Magyar is bow based in Berlin where she is a consultant and curator at Picture Berlin. The video was also shot in Berlin, and reminded me of my visit there a couple of years ago, when I also took the U-Bahn from Rosa Luxemburg Platz to Alexanderplatz, both close to where I stayed, though I took few pictures.