While Tim Burkhart and Stephanie Bassos aren’t the first photographers to double-expose a roll of film, the images they’ve created over the past two years for their People vs. Places project are distinctly original.
The concept is simple- Stephanie shoots a roll of people and then hands the camera over to Tim, who re-loads the same film roll and shoots places. The result is “just a bunch of happy accidents,” says Stephanie. Nothing is photoshopped and neither knows what the other has photographed until the rolls are developed.
What we love so much about their concept is how simple and unassuming it is. Freed from the pressures of creative expectations and industry trends, the images they produce are organic, uninhibited, and surprisingly cool.
Tim and Stephanie met as image designers for the same start-up company and quickly became friends over their shared love for photography. While their styles seemed to come from opposite ends of the photographic spectrum, they admired each other’s work and talked of someday collaborating on a project.
An accidental roll of double exposures got Tim thinking. He realized that one of his older film cameras wasn’t rewinding film all the way, allowing the same roll to be easily reloaded. It was the perfect vehicle for them to bring their two styles together into one image series, and People vs. Places was born.
Sometimes the film changes, but never the camera- they pass Tim’s point-and-shoot Nikon back and forth. Their project is unhurried and unscheduled- it’s purely for fun. It takes a long time to shoot through a few rolls, sometimes months pass before they have new work to show. Both will admit that finding fresh faces and places is the hard part, and there is much trial and error. For every image that “works” they throw away at least five others. But the fun lies in the unknown and the anticipation of each newly developed roll.
We’ve included a few of our favorites below. See more of their work on Tumblr and Instagram.
When a series or a single photograph makes us stop and stare we share it here with you. Our “Right Brain” series is filled with photographs and projects that get our creative wheels spinning.