Cinemagraphs
Photography duo capture fashion’s poetic moments with animated GIFs
Whether showing how to drop your pants or adding creepy slow-lidded blinks, animated GIFs perhaps come the closest to capturing the true essence of a moment—what photographic technology has often struggled to achieve since the first recorded image. NYC-based innovators Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg poetically attempt just that with their forward-thinking fashion photography that they’ve dubbed “cinemagraphs.”
Teaming up with high-fashion names such as Tiffany’s and Christian Louboutin, Jamie and Kevin have created a whole new style of art for digital ads. The images sometimes lean towards the slightly fantastical—the shimmer on a pair of glitter-covered heels or the shadowy flicker of a film. Theirs is a perfect world that somehow collided with ours, creating sensations like the idealized ripple of a silk skirt that may not exist in reality but ought to.
The beauty of their vision lies in its simplicity. Movements are so subtle (a model’s hair blows in the wind, the gentle jostle of the subway, the flash of a passing car) as to not always be apparent at first glance, but closer scrutiny rewards you with these isolate moments of delight.
“There’s something magical about a still photograph,” Jamie explains, calling them “a captured moment in time—that can simultaneously exist outside the fraction of a second the shutter captures.” To see more cinemagraphs, check out Jamie’s Tumblr.
