How do you visualize the passing of time? Old calendars, photo albums, or even growth charts made in the doorway are a good rearview mirror for discrete moments in the past, but to really witness the seconds ticking by, photographs like Michel Lamoller’s are a handier tool.
In the Tautochronos series, the Berlin-based Michel Lamoller has found a way to collapse time-lapse photography into one image. Each piece consists of ten or so photographs taken in the same exact location. The camera stays rooted while the subjects change clothes, or disappear altogether. After printing out the different photographs, he looks for patterns and uses a scalpel to carve out portions of the picture that will yield what he calls, “the most surreal experience.” He stacks them together, maybe tweaking an edge here or there, and then, once finished, he has a topography of several seconds in time.
Tautochronos evolved from an earlier series of Lamoller’s, called Layerscapes, that applies the same technique to landscapes and cityscapes. It’s not nearly as personal as Tautochronos, which is dotted with Lamoller’s personal acquaintances (and sometimes shot in their own homes or bedrooms), but both “come from a more personal wish to describe this happening of two things at the same time in one place,” he says. Like much of Lamoller’s work (he’s also created trompe l’oeil collages of banal objects like power outlets), they have a heavy Surrealist slant, and look like x-rays and camouflaged characters all at once.
Tautochronos (Greek for “at the same time”) is an ongoing series.
