Photographer’s Project to Capture Urban Life in Slow Motion

Photography Tips

Anyone who has lived in a large city can relate to the experience of using public transportation– when you take the same trip every day, it becomes monotonous, anonymous, mundane. Hungarian photographer Adam Magyar has taken that experience and transformed it into something personal, contemplative, and mesmerizing with his “Stainless” series, which exists somewhere between still photographs and slow-motion films:

The idea of the intersection between stillness and motion was precisely the inspiration for Magyar’s project. To pursue this concept, however, he needed to create a custom device from an industrial camera used on assembly lines. To make the setup portable, he coded an iPhone app that would control the camera’s input. He also had to create his own post-processing programs to handle staggering amounts of data.

Magyar made three films with his creation, each in a different metropolis: one in Tokyo’s Shinjuku station, one at Grand Central Station in New York City, and one at Berlin’s Alexanderplatz. He filmed from a train window as the train pulled into the station, capturing city dwellers in great detail at an unexpected moment. There are scenes of impatience, anticipation, and exhaustion; there are also instances of lightheartedness, as when a schoolgirl can be seen running among the crowd in Berlin:

Magyar inadvertently caught a young girl running alongside the train with his high-speed camera.

“The bottom line is really simple. Each concept needs the right device. If any choice is wrong in the process, the end result will be nothing more than a try.” – Adam Magyar