Designer and art director Kevin Weir sources old photographs and animates them into comical, absurd and often haunting gifs. Trawling the online archives of the Library of Congress, Weir uses the instantaneous nature of gifs to rough out short and snappy ideas. The photographs he uses as a base are all black and white, straight-faced, historical snapshots and result in a very Monty Python-esque comedic sketch.
Innocent Grandmas suddenly morph into tens of menacing crows and fly off screen. Bombed-out cities have strange monsters stalking in the background, materializing through wisps of smoke. We witness composed soldiers having their souls depart their uniformed bodies. Some changes are so subtle, we think maybe we are imagining it, adding to the haunting illusion of the whole scene.
Hosted on a tumblr site called The Flux Machine, Weir shows off his knack for humor. From an early age Weir was playing around with Photoshop and adding his own spin to various images. Throughout grad school he had a lot of spare time to fine tune his skills and years later spiced up his hobby of animating birds – coming up with these bizarre ideas. He says he is always drawn to “unknowable places and persons”; to pictures that aren’t loaded with modern day associations. The little “Princess Juliana” child sitting in her rocking chair conjuring up a flame, would feel completely different in a modern day context. The blend of antiquity, deadpan humor and surrealism in Weir’s work is a potently hilarious combination.
I will be posting more of these gifs in the days to come.
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