Magnum Photos Blog

"Still Films" From Brazil 

June 17, 2014 
by Jonas Bendiksen 
(BRAZIL. Sao Paulo. June 12, 2014. Brazilians watching the TV-transmission of the opening World Cup-game, Brazil-Croatia, in downtown Sao Paulo at the Fifa Fan Fest. The moment when Brazil scored the final, winning goal. - Jonas Bendiksen/Coverage by Magnum Photos for ESPN with the support of Save the Dream and Instituto Moreira Salles.)

With Still Films, I want to steal the moving image away from film narrative and videos.

I love moving images, but I don't see why they always have to be forced into the tight framework of narrative films. In photography, I love the single moments, the quest to distill the essence out of situations. I love to move freely when I photography, without the big production crews often associated with even the smallest of films. I love the found moments, to not direct. So I tried to think what my dream format would be that blended these two. The result was small films that are photographed using a super-slowmotion camera, that can convert a second's decisive moment into twenty seconds of video. The film gets slowed down so much one absorbs it more as a photograph than a movie.

-Jonas Bendiksen, June 17, 2014