This guy is taking photos of himself every half hour for three weeks. There’s something fascinating about his almost-identical expression in every photo, the ever-changing backgrounds that are somehow almost the same despite their wild differences and the repetetiveness of it all. He’s always moving yet always alone, too, have you noticed? Makes me want to try it myself.

9 thoughts on “halfhourly photos

  1. Henning

    Reminds me of the movie Smoke with Harvey Keitel

  2. Matt

    No, I know you are better looking, but one trial is enough! There’s something off-putting about this particular series.

    Think of another way of introducing time/life/travel/routine into still images!

    FWIW, I’m doing a Pond (link: “the clearing”), at whatever interval I fancy.

  3. Jill

    Wow, this photo of yours is very akin to this one of mine. Driftwood.

    Matt, you have a strange and intriguing weblog. What exactly do you mean by doing a Pond, though? Or did I just not read far enough?

  4. Matt

    You read as far as the words had drifted …

    I guess you mean [in sillhouette] was similar?

    Doing a pond implies simply this:

    1. (the algorithm)
    – when nearby, go, preferably walk/run, to the pond and take its picture
    – stand in the same spot each time
    – repeat for a year, or so
    – assemble the series, somehow (print? web? video? matchboxes??)
    – put it, the assemblage, somewhere … to be decided …

    2. (the rationale)

    see what changes
    – in the scene
    – in the picture-taker
    – in the viewer of the pictures
    – in anything else that emerges

  5. Jill

    Ah. Exactly. I suppose I sort of do that with life. The algorithm is less clear.

    I like it though.

    Yes, I meant [in silhouette]. The link in my comment was broken. I fixed it now 🙂

  6. Doug

    Wow. Weirdly intimate – like going on holiday with someone, even through airport-terminal hell.

  7. jim

    His face is the self as identity isn’t it…the subject in the scene..He needs no body but we can see who he is and around his near expressionless features passes many scenes we recognise (almost script like)..the airport bathtub fishmarekt shopping centre street….I like very much

  8. fivecats

    Bruce Barone, mylastsigh over at LJ, has been doing a similar thing. His project is a self-portrait per day this year. He’s posted a lot of them, along with his other stunning photographs in his blog.

    Worth checking out.

  9. drift words

    regularity
    Here’s “my” pond again, roughly a fortnight ago … The obvious, if not to say hackneyed, idea behind this growing pond series is …

Leave a Reply to Jill Cancel reply

Recommended Posts

Triple book talk: Watch James Dobson, Jussi Parikka and me discuss our 2023 books

Thanks to everyone who came to the triple book talk of three recent books on machine vision by James Dobson, Jussi Parikka and me, and thanks for excellent questions. Several people have emailed to asked if we recorded it, and yes we did! Here you go! James and Jussi’s books […]

Image on a black background of a human hand holding a graphic showing the word AI with a blue circuit board pattern inside surrounded by blurred blue and yellow dots and a concentric circular blue design.
AI and algorithmic culture Machine Vision

Four visual registers for imaginaries of machine vision

I’m thrilled to announce another publication from our European Research Council (ERC)-funded research project on Machine Vision: Gabriele de Setaand Anya Shchetvina‘s paper analysing how Chinese AI companies visually present machine vision technologies. They find that the Chinese machine vision imaginary is global, blue and competitive.  De Seta, Gabriele, and Anya Shchetvina. “Imagining Machine […]

Do people flock to talks about ChatGPT because they are scared?

Whenever I give talks about ChatGPT and LLMs, whether to ninth graders, businesses or journalists, I meet people who are hungry for information, who really want to understand this new technology. I’ve interpreted this as interest and a need to understand – but yesterday, Eirik Solheim said that every time […]