The speed of time

With these photographs I am trying to communicate a sense of relative speed of time to the viewer. Is the moment captured a long moment or a short one. Or maybe it has a different length for the different people in the photograph? I am still working on this but want to share these few photographs with you already. What do you think, is there some sense of “waiting”, “time passing” or even “time passes quickly” or some other sense of time present in these photographs?

Photo Joeri van Veen 2015
Photo Joeri van Veen 2015
Photo Joeri van Veen 2015
Photo Joeri van Veen 2015
Photo Joeri van Veen 2015
Photo Joeri van Veen 2015
Photo Joeri van Veen 2015
Photo Joeri van Veen 2015

4 thoughts on “The speed of time”

  1. An interesting concept. For me, the idea of time passing is best shown by the ‘reading a book’ part in one of your photographs.

  2. You’ve changed photo’s! Your second interpretation of waiting is way stronger than the first (now removed) attempt. I really like the small details like the fallen leaves left on the floor, not cleaned up by the bloke in the picture waiting for the missus to come home (and probably feed him, clean the house etc. :-)) The time of day is well chosen, after sunset but still enough light to see details of the outside world. Here the details are much more refined than in for example the ‘reading a book’ photo. This ‘bloke with falling leaves’ shot is by far my favorite.
    Your flickr page (through which I came here) also mentions candid with regards to these photographs. To me, this series feels more like a series of posed shots. (With my limited understanding of photography I automatically assume that ‘candid’ and ‘posing’ cannot go together. I may be utterly wrong though…)

    1. Yes! I changed one of the photographs because I was not satisfied with the light in one of them and re-shot another one (that you are referring to) after posting the blog. I agree with your analysis that the details are more refined, thank you for your praise. 🙂
      The candid-part is taking somewhat of a backseat indeed I must confess. At first the shots were 95% candid, but now it is mostly a set stage (by me) and the people behaving in a certain way. I still try to go with what occurs naturally but in the case of the self-portraits of course nothing is natural about my behaviour… Maybe it is Jeff-Wall-candid: 100% staged based on what could be candid. Or something.

  3. I just saw the old version of ‘bloke with falling leaves’ on your Instagram stream. Indeed this image is more powerful than the older version.
    I like the idea of using your Instagram stream as a ‘behind the scenes’ channel for your photo work. Something even I, a non-Instagrammer, will check out regularly. 🙂

Leave a Reply to Bas Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *