French photographer Nicolas Monterrat’s gifs bring architecture to life – with a twist. Clouds pass by the windows of Mad Men-style offices and water plunges through a hole in a living room floor.
Monterrat creates these eye-popping animations using vintage images and his own photography. For ‘First class office’, for example, he filmed the clouds by phone on an airplane.
‘Vintage photography can be so serious, it makes me want to shake, twist and twirl it to shift the whole thing and bring some poetry, humour or unreality to it,’ he says. ‘For instance, the images of scientists’ labs are so austere, I take them to a less serious world where bubbles can come out of a strange contraption.’
Monterrat is a self-taught animator. ‘I learned the Deadalus-like art of bringing my little stories to life through the inter web,’ he explains. ‘And I’m still learning, of course. I have an advantage though, I always have a camera with me – a little Lumix to take pictures and videos and my smartphone too.’
We find his tumblr Un gif dans ta gueule compulsive viewing.
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