Kevin Weir, “Jacob”, Computer Graphics, Vintage Photograph Gifs

 

Art director and designer Kevin Weir uses historical black and white photographs forgotten to time as the basis for his quirky—and slightly disturbing—animated GIFs. Having mastered Photoshop in high school, he found himself five years later “making black and white GIFs as a way to occupy myself during the downtime of an internship I had during grad school.” He shared the images on his Tumblr “Flux Machine” where they quickly went viral.

Weir makes use of photographs found in the Library of Congress online archive, and is deeply drawn to what he calls “unknowable places and persons,” images with little connection to present day, that he can use as blank canvas for his weird ideas. The tinted nature of the medium’s limited frames of animation and the creepiness factor add to the strangeness of the gifs.

Weir is now an art director at Droga5 in NYC, he also also animates music videos and sassy birds.