Swirling Time-Lapse Nudes

Swirling Time-Lapse Nudes Capture the Allure of Bodies in Motion

• BY DOUG BIEREND
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    Nude #8 2012
    
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    Nude #1 2012
    
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    Nude #4 2012
    
  • Nude #5 2012
    
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    Nude #9 2012
    
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    Nude #7 2012
    
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    Nude #6 2012
    
  • Nude #3 2012
    
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    Nude #2 2012
    
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  Time-lapse photography has the unique ability to reveal hidden dimensions to even the most familiar forms. Take for example Japanese photographer Shinichi Maruyama’s nudes, which capture the human body in a way we’ve never seen before. Each image combines 10,000 individual frames snapped while dancers perform meticulously choreographed gestures. The result straddles the line between sculpture and performance art.
  “I tried to express the beauty of both the human body’s figure and its motion as well as the concept of time,” he says.
  Though the images are flowing and organic and appear utterly spontaneous, they were the result of months of careful planning. Maruyama is keeping the technical details of the process to himself, but did say that although shooting the images required only a day, the choreography took five months to prepare. Layering the images to create the final pieces required another eight months.
  “I had planned what I’d like the final form to be,” says Maruyama, whose studio is in New York. “Jessica Langdeveloped and finalized the movements for the dancers.”
  He cites Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase as a major inspiration for the project. Like Duchamp, Maruyama also drew inspiration from the early sequence photography of Étienne-Jules Marey. When discussing his work, Maruyama often invokes Zen Buddhism and its notion of impermanence. Even though his photos appear to be one fluid motion, he likes to think about them as the accumulation of distinct events.
  “In everyday life, we feel that time is flowing but it is actually an endless repetition,” he says. “One moment appears and disappears then another moment appears after and disappears… In Zen, we think that every moment is independent from one another.”
  Photos: Shinichi Maruyama
  http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2013/12/shinichi-maruyama/?viewall=true