It’s the incredible flying man! In his recently published collection Flying Pictures, photographer Daniel Gordon has revived the dying art of analog image-manipulation to create what just may be the most magically beautiful photos I have ever seen. And of course, by analog image manipulation I don’t mean Photoshop, or even Hollywood-style smoke and mirrors: to create these beautiful illusions of unaided human flight, Mr. Gordon uses nothing more than his own acrobatic prowess, an impressive tolerance for pain, and the camera’s natural ability to capture a frozen moment.
With an eye for settings and a talent for staying remarkably parallel to the horizon, Gordon is able to preserve through film his ephemeral victories over gravity. The images are sharp (without any blur or appearance of movement) and vibrant, with a noticeably extended depth of field, and a brief enough exposure to give the impression that he is indeed hovering in the air. No matter that he always crashes painfully to the ground seconds later, his pictures exemplify photography’s inherent relationship with fantasy and illusion. In a way, by showing us only a fraction of a second, photos are never less mythical than human flight in the reality of our forever changing world.
In all its vulnerable and wonderment-filled glory, Gordon’s Flying Pictures is pure photographic magic.
Check out more Flying Pictures HERE
