Saturday, May 19, 2007

Michael Wesely... oh, no, it's not



At first glance, these "Netropolis" pictures look to be Michael Wesely's, of the reconstruction of Berlin, re-modelling of MoMA - but they aren't.

In fact they're by Michael Najjar (a funky if slightly annoying website...). He has a lot of other stuff on his site - most of it a lot slicker and some rather more conceptual (I rather like the idea of his Iraq pictures, but not quite their execution)


Back to Netropolis, whereas Wesely produced his pictures from a fixed point with long or multiple exposures, Najjar takes multiple images and combines them:


"The complexity of the city is visually apparent in Michael Najjar's multi-layered photographic prints. Like Fritz Lang whose 1926 film Metropolis envisioned the futuristic city, Najjar’s Netropolis series carries the notion a step further, positing the city as a locus of computer networks and digital information. In Netropolis/Shanghai, 2003, he photographed from the tallest building in the city of Shanghai. Using a conventional camera, Najjar shot to the north, south, east and west. These images were converted to digital files and combined into a single image that was manipulated on the computer. In the final stage the work is converted back and produced as a traditional silver gelatin print. The resulting image gives the viewer a sense of seeing through time".

(There are more detailed descriptions of his work on the website - but it's all Flash junk)