Long-exposure photography has been a 'thing' ever since photography was invented. But Robert Hermann's images, under the project name '60-second slices of present', have a particularly haunting quality. They show famous London scenes in which a 60 second exposure leaves the buildings solid and permanent while humans are smeared around like ghosts. As Robert explains:
"60-second slices of present" is an ongoing project that is inspired by three essential elements — time, man and man-made space. For the last couple of years I have been developing a concept to describe how people are using the city. The most interesting factor I discovered is human scale – human scale not only in a spatial but also in a temporal sense. How much of the city's human factor is still representable if I slightly shift my result out of the conventional frame of human perception. Technically I expose each frame for a period of 60 seconds in full daylight. Thus, the vibrant flux of everyday life is tending to dissolve into fog-like patterns while permanent structures remain sharp and clear.
More of Robert's work can be found on his website, including further images of London as well as photos of other cities.
