‘Boston Layer-Lapse’, A Mesmerizing Look at Boston Through Multiple Timelapse Layers

“Boston Layer-Lapse” is a short by photographer Julian Tryba that explores the historic American city through layered timelapse footage that doesn’t adhere to a standard narrative timeline. The result is simultaneously chaotic, beautiful, and mesmerizing as different portions of the same scene experience different times of the day.

Traditional time-lapses are constrained by the idea that there is a single universal clock. In the spirit of Einstein’s relativity theory, layer-lapses assign distinct clocks to any number of objects or regions in a scene. Each of these clocks may start at any point in time, and tick at any rate. The result is a visual time dilation effect known as layer-lapse.