The Falling Man Projects
About Jeroen Zwaap
About Jeroen Zwaap
In several projects the artist deals with the impact and implications of having seen Richard Drew's 'Falling Man' image as he tries to answer questions like: why is this picture such a strong resonating one? How did this image shape the view on the American trauma? What are the moral implications of watching a man falling to his death?
"Although I cannot exactly remember what I felt when I saw the image of The Falling Man by Richard Drew for the first time, I can imagine what I felt. I can imagine that I saw the human vulnerability in the most intimate of moments in a human life. The grace of it. The calmness aimed head-down towards the inevitable. I must have seen the juxtaposition between the graceful fall and the horrific timeline that lead to this fall. I think I did not understand the power of photography yet (do I today?), but I must have seen how time had been suspended and created an aura, or maybe even a protective shield, of timelessness around the person.
And although there are no recognizable facial features, I would’ve recognized myself in this person. I would have asked myself: what would I feel, what would I do?
In several projects the artist deals with the impact and implications of having seen Richard Drew's 'Falling Man' image as he tries to answer questions like: why is this picture such a strong resonating one? How did this image shape the view on the American trauma? What are the moral implications of watching a man falling to his death?
"Although I cannot exactly remember what I felt when I saw the image of The Falling Man by Richard Drew for the first time, I can imagine what I felt. I can imagine that I saw the human vulnerability in the most intimate of moments in a human life. The grace of it. The calmness aimed head-down towards the inevitable. I must have seen the juxtaposition between the graceful fall and the horrific timeline that lead to this fall. I think I did not understand the power of photography yet (do I today?), but I must have seen how time had been suspended and created an aura, or maybe even a protective shield, of timelessness around the person.
And although there are no recognizable facial features, I would’ve recognized myself in this person. I would have asked myself: what would I feel, what would I do?
In several projects the artist deals with the impact and implications of having seen Richard Drew's 'Falling Man' image as he tries to answer questions like: why is this picture such a strong resonating one? How did this image shape the view on the American trauma? What are the moral implications of watching a man falling to his death?
"Although I cannot exactly remember what I felt when I saw the image of The Falling Man by Richard Drew for the first time, I can imagine what I felt. I can imagine that I saw the human vulnerability in the most intimate of moments in a human life. The grace of it. The calmness aimed head-down towards the inevitable. I must have seen the juxtaposition between the graceful fall and the horrific timeline that lead to this fall. I think I did not understand the power of photography yet (do I today?), but I must have seen how time had been suspended and created an aura, or maybe even a protective shield, of timelessness around the person.
And although there are no recognizable facial features, I would’ve recognized myself in this person. I would have asked myself: what would I feel, what would I do?
In several projects the artist deals with the impact and implications of having seen Richard Drew's 'Falling Man' image as he tries to answer questions like: why is this picture such a strong resonating one? How did this image shape the view on the American trauma? What are the moral implications of watching a man falling to his death?
"Although I cannot exactly remember what I felt when I saw the image of The Falling Man by Richard Drew for the first time, I can imagine what I felt. I can imagine that I saw the human vulnerability in the most intimate of moments in a human life. The grace of it. The calmness aimed head-down towards the inevitable. I must have seen the juxtaposition between the graceful fall and the horrific timeline that lead to this fall. I think I did not understand the power of photography yet (do I today?), but I must have seen how time had been suspended and created an aura, or maybe even a protective shield, of timelessness around the person.
And although there are no recognizable facial features, I would’ve recognized myself in this person. I would have asked myself: what would I feel, what would I do?
In several projects the artist deals with the impact and implications of having seen Richard Drew's 'Falling Man' image as he tries to answer questions like: why is this picture such a strong resonating one? How did this image shape the view on the American trauma? What are the moral implications of watching a man falling to his death?
"Although I cannot exactly remember what I felt when I saw the image of The Falling Man by Richard Drew for the first time, I can imagine what I felt. I can imagine that I saw the human vulnerability in the most intimate of moments in a human life. The grace of it. The calmness aimed head-down towards the inevitable. I must have seen the juxtaposition between the graceful fall and the horrific timeline that lead to this fall. I think I did not understand the power of photography yet (do I today?), but I must have seen how time had been suspended and created an aura, or maybe even a protective shield, of timelessness around the person.
And although there are no recognizable facial features, I would’ve recognized myself in this person. I would have asked myself: what would I feel, what would I do?
In several projects the artist deals with the impact and implications of having seen Richard Drew's 'Falling Man' image as he tries to answer questions like: why is this picture such a strong resonating one? How did this image shape the view on the American trauma? What are the moral implications of watching a man falling to his death?
"Although I cannot exactly remember what I felt when I saw the image of The Falling Man by Richard Drew for the first time, I can imagine what I felt. I can imagine that I saw the human vulnerability in the most intimate of moments in a human life. The grace of it. The calmness aimed head-down towards the inevitable. I must have seen the juxtaposition between the graceful fall and the horrific timeline that lead to this fall. I think I did not understand the power of photography yet (do I today?), but I must have seen how time had been suspended and created an aura, or maybe even a protective shield, of timelessness around the person.
And although there are no recognizable facial features, I would’ve recognized myself in this person. I would have asked myself: what would I feel, what would I do?
In Transit
an ongoing research into photography, mobility and relations we form with the world around us
00 // central question
What happens to our relationship with a landscape when we move through it at 300 kilometres per hour?
Travelling through Japan aboard the Shinkansen, this ongoing research investigates how speed and infrastructure shape our encounters with passing landscapes. Through photographic transduction, sound and vision become entangled in images that register not only the landscape, but the conditions of travelling through it.
01 // research film
An inquiry into landscapes in transit
Part I · A narrated account of the initial observations, questions and photographic experiments.
Research film 001 — The Shinkansen Experiment
The film introduces the first phase of the investigation: the paradox of mobility, the fleeting landscape, and an apparatus in which environmental sound participates in photographic image formation.
02 // emerging proposition
“The Shinkansen doesn’t simply reduce distance. It redistributes distance.”
By shortening the time between destinations, high-speed infrastructure may also diminish the time available to remain perceptually with the places in between. What is geographically close becomes fleeting; the distant horizon offers a fragile continuity.
03 // research journal
Studies, experiments & observations
An evolving archive. Each entry documents a question, a material experiment and what it makes possible to observe.
Fig 01 — Shinkansen Windows. A sequence of recovered video frames capturing the moment two bullet trains pass one another: looking from inside, through the windows of another train, into its interior.
01 / observations
Fig. 02 Retrospective sketch of the spatial experience: inner awareness, the moving carriage and the landscape beyond.
I seem to be still inside a room that never stops moving.
Travelling through Japan on the Shinkansen, I find myself in a peculiar spatial condition. My body remains almost still, enclosed within a room that carries me through the landscape at extraordinary speed. The seat, the window, the objects around me remain available to my attention. Within this moving enclosure, I experience a fragile sense of continuity. Beyond the window, another
spatial reality unfolds. Trees rush past, settlements appear and disappear, fields glide out of sight. I traverse these places without being able to remain with them. Strangely, the distant horizon offers greater perceptual continuity than the environments closest to me.I become aware of three experiential horizons: my inner sense of space, the space in which I travel, and the space through which I travel. They coexist, yet resist being brought together into a single coherent experience.The window becomes the point at which these horizons meet and rub against one another. Through it, I see a world I am physically moving through but cannot inhabit. Its reflections mingle with the interior, while the landscape continually escapes my gaze.
02 / spatial exploration
Three spaces, one relation
in the making
The sketch becomes a moving perspective. The film shifts between the space I sense within myself, the carriage that carries me and the landscape through which I travel.
Film 01 A shifting perspective — three spatial experiences, one journey
03 / sound as horizon
Yet there is another experiential horizon: sound.
The continuous hum of the train, its mechanical rhythms and vibrations, the air moving around it, the sounds of fellow passengers. These are not merely sounds inside the carriage. They emerge through the material conditions of travelling: the encounter between train, infrastructure, atmosphere and environment.
While the landscape continually slips away from my vision, the sound of travelling remains with me. It carries something of the journey's material conditions into the space I inhabit.
At the window, these different ways of experiencing the world become entangled. What I see, what I hear, what I feel and where I understand myself to be do not entirely coincide. Yet none of these experiences arises independently of the conditions of the journey.
This tension gives rise to a photographic question.
What if the sound of travelling could participate in the formation of the photograph?
What if the camera did not merely register the passing landscape, but allowed the sonic conditions of travelling through it to influence how its image comes into being?Rather than adding sound to an already formed image, I began to wonder whether sound could become materially operative within photographic formation itself.The photograph might then become more than an image of the landscape passing outside the window. It could become a trace of the encounter between the environments through which I travel, the infrastructure that carries me, and the conditions through which I perceive them.