Time Lapse
In 2011, photographer Xan Padrón began his series Time Lapse. His fascination with time and movement along with his ability to disappear behind his camera led him to reflect about how much life happens in the supposedly most insignificant places of a city.
Time Lapse are human portraits of cities around the world.
They are also quotidian expressions, that combined, create a unique narrative of life on a wall, in a place in the world.
Time Lapse is a place, a moment.
For Xan Padrón, the voluntary detention of movement -where action becomes an observation- led him to center himself on a different vision for his street photography, documenting the ecosystem of cities and finding beauty through pause and through the small, collective gestures of daily life.
In Time Lapse, Xan Padrón places his camera in an unnoticed space, and during the space of two hours, he photographs a sequence of people passing before a unique wall. Time Lapse is a living project that includes sociological portraits of cities like New York, London, Beijing, Sydney, Trinidad, Berlin, Paris, or Medellín.
*The Time Lapse Project has been the focus of solo exhibitions at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, the Delamour Gallery in Paris (France), The Pfizer Building in New York, the Sala Valente in Ourense (Spain), among other venues. Xan Padrón's artwork is held in corporate and private collections across the globe. In 2019, the project was awarded third place at the CENTER Editor’s Choice Award selected by MaryAnne Golon, director of photography at The Washington Post. In 2023, Xan Padrón was invited by the MTA Arts & Design Program in New York City to exhibit a selection of his Time Lapse series at the Bryant Park subway station (42nd Street and 6th Avenue).
