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Posted: 10/7/2011
Ephemerals -- www.andrezuniga.com
Ephemerals belongs to the City Symphony genre.. I love to find beauty in environments created by humans, in all their greatness and misery, from the perfection of a skyscraper silhouette to the distortions that we find in reflections or to the misery of a trash dump. I try to show the movement of the city from the perspective of the ephemeral subject. This means that I have to find unique locations that show the city by reflecting the city itself on their surfaces. These surfaces are never stable, they change continuously. The shots vary depending on the amount of light they receive and on the place where the ephemeral observer is located.
This kind of work is deeply influenced by the work of artists I admire. For instance Dziga Vertov Symphony, Walter Ruttmann, Joris Ivens and early American works like the ones found in the Unseen Cinema: Picturing a Metropolis - NYC unveiled, Manhatta (1921) by Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand, Twenty-four-Dollar Island (1927) by Robert Flaherty,A Bronx Morning (1931by Jay Leyda,Footnote to Fact (1933)by Lewis Jacobs,The Pursuit of Happiness (1940) by Rudy Burckhardt and Skyscraper Symphony (1929) by Robert Florey. In these films the camera work is different from the camera work in narrative cinema since the director has broader options for camera work that expand his possibilities.
Also a big influence has been youtube.com and archive.org . In these websites I have found many movies about the city experience from anonymous filmmakers and videomakers from all times and from all countries in the world, specially from Peru.
I have been working with Peruvian musician and friend Tomas Tello (www.andesground.com). His music has been a great complement and influence in my art.