Moving Portrait #17 from Scott Bankert on Vimeo.
Imagine entering a gallery space and surrounding you on the walls are the color portraits of seated subjects. As you linger, studying the portraits, you begin to detect the slightest movement in a portrait you are closely looking at, as if the portrait is somehow alive within its frame, looking back at you. You approach another image and detect again the slightest movement. Then you turn and look across the room and suddenly all of the portraits begin to blink in unison, a blink that takes several seconds to complete. There is that ghostly moment in which all eyes are closed in the room (except yours). And then the subjects open their eyes and smile, a slow, synchronous gesture to let you know they are happy you discovered them inside time, so very deeply embedded within it. This is the project, “Moving Portraits.” Shot on the Phantom high-speed camera system at 1000 frames per second and intended for installation purposes in museums and public spaces. The hope is twofold for the audience: that one, they will move ever so slightly from looking (at stills) to watching (motion pictures) and that in this seeing they might come to a better understanding of the oneness of being in the moment and not outside, detached, but rather complicit, an active participant in the blink of an eye. (+sB 2014)