Orthographic panoramas

Orthographic panoramas: a self-developed technique for seemingly ordinary street images composed of hundreds of fragments of photographs.

The idea of orthographic panoramas originated when I was walking through a street in Myanmar where each house was different, which is something exceptional in the Netherlands. I wanted to capture the diversity, but taking a picture of the street itself did not get that across. It was then that I started experimenting with sequences of photographs. During the three months I spent in Los Angeles in 2005, I discovered, explored and developed the technique of the orthographic panorama.

An orthographic panorama is created by moving the camera linearly while taking a series of photos along the route. For example, it can show the houses on a street, making it seem as if at every point of the picture you were looking straight at them. Consequently, there are many vanishing points in a single panorama.

There is no software to produce this, because the depth and perspective of the different pictures cannot be joined. A tree or car in front of a house will ‘move’ in relation to the house once the camera angle is changed. My orthographic panoramas are therefore made up of hundreds of fragments, all of which have been ‘cut out’ separately and then reassembled in a, so it seems, correct way. This technique is very laborious and is used by hardly anyone else in the world. The panoramas are razor-sharp and several metres long.

Interested in a print or to hear more about the technique? Please contact me!