Reenactment of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s procession to meet the emperor in 1956, Jidai Matsuri

For this striking image of Kyoto’s Jidai Matsuri, Svab repurposed an industrial linescan camera originally designed to detect defects in computer chips on a factory conveyor belt. The photo is composed of nearly 50,000 vertical lines, captured as the parade passed in front of the lens. These lines were stacked together like frames in a film, creating a stretched, motionless background where space is strangely frozen but the parade seems to walk through time.

Unlike with a traditional camera, this technique eliminates depth and perspective, and there is no vanishing point. Objects in the foreground appear foreshortened, while those in the background become elongated, giving the image a distorted surreal quality.

Though Svab used a vintage 1970s camera, the sensor behind it is cutting-edge technology, requiring a computer to process massive amounts of data in real time. Each vertical frame is about 7,500 pixels high, equivalent to a high-resolution camera, and represents one-sixthousandth of a second. With an exposure time of 20 to 40 seconds, the final image produces a mesmerizing ripple effect, as if revealing the passage of time itself.

Detailed view of image