In Photo-Synthesis of Perception (Man Walking Backwards) I focused on the possibility that these kind of images have to mislead our perception of movement.
As a choreographer I asked the medium (the negative) to perform a certain action, to ‘walk’ forward, the subject to perform another, to walk backward, and the other elements in the scene to be positioned in a certain way (namely the cars and their plates). Through the combination of these actions (and the specific medium as it is not possible to do it with a video camera, for example) our perception is constantly tricked and we are forced to reconsider again a simple act as walking. The cars are the first key to understand and make bearings of what is happening in the image. The second is the movement of the legs and the position of the body of the man.
The succession of both the cars with their shiny plates and the legs of the man in their repetition of the act of walking resemble a dance where apparently random events also happen. These can be flares that blow up the image, or lights that, like an Archimedes’ bulb, suddenly appear near the face of the man and follow him and his movements, or the appearance of an unexpected actor on the scene (the figure on the window in the very last part of the image).