Flip book artist tells stories behind encounters while walking across Germany

A photographic artist is using flip books to document people he meets while walking the German countryside and now he's turned it into a travelling stage performance that he's bringing to Calgary this weekend as part of the High Performance Rodeo.

Volker Gerling began taking long walks around Germany 14 years ago. Very long walks.

"I did my first long walk in 2003," Gerling told The Homestretch Thursday.

"It was a three-month walk."

The intrepid traveller got the idea while in film school after viewing a documentary that spoke to him.

"I saw a documentary showing an old woman living in a home for old people. She was maybe in her 80s or 90s. She had a flip book of herself showing her as a young woman. That was a really wonderful scene because you could see her becoming alive," Gerling explained.

"I realized that the flip book is a wonderful medium to tell something about people."

Gerling created a few flip books and uses them to start a conversation with people he meets on his walks.

He puts them on a tray that he wears with a sign that draws walkers in.

"You can imagine if you walk for thousands of kilometres through Germany, you meet wonderful people.

If I have a really intimate and good encounter, I ask people if I can photograph them."

Gerling says it's his unconventional approach to photography that inspires unscripted and sometimes beautiful images.

"When I ask them if I can photograph them, I don't tell them that I am making a flip book of them," he explained.

"They expect to be photographed once or twice, the way they are used to being photographed. Instead, I photograph them 36 times in 12 seconds. People are very excited about this technique, so they start to react in a special way. My flip books are all about their gestures and emotions from that moment."

German artist tells stories with photo flip books

8 years ago

Duration 0:09

Volker Gerling began walking and talking photos about 14 years ago

He says flip books have this fascinating distinction from regular filmmaking.

"I think there is a big difference, because in a flip bookyou feel the gaps," he said.

"In a conventional film, you also have these gaps, but the normal film tries its hardest to hide them. In a flip book, you feel them and you have to fill in the gaps. I think the power and poetry happens in the gaps between the pictures, between the frames of a flip book."

Gerling has turned his flip books into a stage performance where he projects himself flipping through the books onto a big screen.

"It is not only about showing my flip book, it's also about telling the stories behind the encounters. Being a story teller is what I am really interested in," he confided.

"I have many stories to tell very nice stories, also sad stories, and they are all real stories."

Gerling's show, Portraits in Motion, opens at the High Performance Rodeo this weekend with shows on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Theatre Junction Grand.

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With files from The Homestretch