Portraits in Motion, the first 20 Years

It’s been 20 years since Volker Gerling started walking, camera in hand, the back paths, quiet paths, over 5.500 kms and still walking, taking his time, trying to see something, understand something, find something out. Over all these years, Gerling has become a time traveler. He can make it go forwards or backwards. Or sometimes he can even stop it, make it stand still for a moment, capturing images and placing them in flip books in search of that most elusive element of modern life, the “now’ moment. The moment that we can actually see. 

Times passes also in long moments, just as in short ones. He revisits people he has already fotographed, but then years later, to capture them again. Looking for what he calls ‘their true nature, their true face’. To quote the Russian theatre critic Marina Davydova: “In every human being there is an inner core that is completely detached from social origin and nationality. That is what art should be interested in.” 

Since 2003 traveller and photographer Volker Gerling has walked over 5.500 kms through Germany, inviting people to visit his travelling ‘thumb cinema’ exhibition, and creating flipbooks of people that he meets along the way. He calls himself a ‘thumb cinematographer’, and has been performing his work internationally for many years, to great acclaim.