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Portfolio: Adam Magyar creates taxonomic-like compositions for his project Squares

 

Robert Epstein
Sunday 09 February 2014 01:00 GMT
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Magyar makes believable a moment that has never existed
Magyar makes believable a moment that has never existed (Adam Magyar)

'It's like collecting bugs," says Adam Magyar of this taxonomic-like composition he created for his project "Squares". Over the course of a few days, he shot individual images of hundreds of people while standing on pedestrian overpasses and bridges – then spent a few weeks creating composites such as the one pictured above, digitally forging vast imaginary plazas.

"I started work on [the series] in Shanghai when I got interested in depicting people in infinite spaces, taking them out from their personal surroundings, and studying existence in general. I try breaking free from the time trap we are living in," he explains of the inspiration for the project.

"It is a game with time and space, reality and fiction, loneliness and community. You see crowds in all my photos, but rarely any interaction. In some of the Squares, someone is looking up at you. This is the sort of perspective of god. At least, that's how I imagined it when I was a child."

The majority of the photographs were taken in Hong Kong and Tokyo – and for the 41-year-old Hungarian, who now lives in Berlin, the flow of the piece is made real by the (high-resolution) detail of those originally shot in splendid isolation. People seen on the left here were photographed from the right; and those on the right captured from the left, creating a perspectively correct experience. Thus, Magyar makes believable a moment that has never existed.

For more: magyaradam.com

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