Bizarre or trending subjects? Catch a break with our curiosity of the week. Photographer Molly Strohl animates her pictures to create 3D illusions. A work mixing humour with originality.
Molly Strohl, a 25-year-old American photographer, started photography almost ten years ago. First viewed as a way to apprehend a new environment – after moving into a new State – the medium quickly started to fascinate her. She then graduated from a Bachelor of Fine Arts, at the Savannah College of Art and Design. While she was still a student, a friend gifted her a Nimslo – a stereo camera. “At the time, I wasn’t really interested in shooting films, and it sat on a shelf for the next few years”, she remembers. “One day, I wanted to experiment with photography, and I saw the Nimslo, sitting with a thin layer of dust over it… I put it in my bag and I don’t think I’ve put it down since then”.
A hypnotic movement
“The Nimslo works just like our eyes”
, the photographer explains. “They are spaced so that our brains interpret the world in 3D. The 4 lenses on the camera does the same thing”. After printing and scanning the pictures, Molly layers them on Photoshop. Finally, she animates those layers, to reveal a third dimension, visible to the naked eye.
To Molly, animation adds a depth to the image. “I pull my viewer in even further. I can almost hypnotise them with the movement”, she tells us. Her inspiration? It comes from her everyday life. From spectacular events to the most mundane moments. “If I’m not constantly keeping an eye out, I’ll begin to not see inspiration in anything, and life would become incredibly dull!” she declares. By producing those “wiggly images”, the photographer distils humour and originality in a world which can sometimes feel too heavy.
© Molly Strohl
