Xan Padrón’s Time Lapse Series
 
In 2011, photographer Xan Padrón began his series Time Lapse. His fascination with time and movement along with his ability to disappear behind his camera led him to reflect about how much life happens in the supposedly most insignificant places of a city.
 
Time Lapse are human portraits of cities around the world. They are also quotidian expressions, that combined, create a unique narrative of life on a wall, in a place in the world.
 
Time Lapse is a place, a moment.
 
For Xan Padrón, the voluntary detention of movement -where action becomes an observation- led him to center himself on a different vision for his street photography, documenting the ecosystem of cities and finding beauty through pause and through the small, collective gestures of daily life.
In Time Lapse, Xan Padrón places his camera in an unnoticed space, and during the space of two hours, he photographs a sequence of people passing before a unique wall. Time Lapse is a living project that includes sociological portraits of cities like New York, London, Beijing, Sydney, Trinidad, Berlin, Paris, or Medellín.
 

Xan Padrón’s Biography

Galician photographer Xan Padrón (Ourense, Spain, 1969) received his first camera at the hands of the photojournalist Enrique Reza, who awoke in him a passion for the photography of the everyday, just as his father, the journalist Luís Padrón, awoke in him the patience to listen and observe stories.
 
After diverse street photography projects in New York City (Human City, Motion City), in 2011 he began his acclaimed project, “Time Lapse”: a collection of portraits of various cities through the people who inhabit them. His series Time Lapse has been exhibited, among other places, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, The Pfizer Building in New York, and the Sala Valente in Spain. Xan Padrón's artwork is held in corporate and private collections
across the globe.
 
In 2023, Padrón was invited by the MTA Arts & Design Program to exhibit at the Bryant Park subway station in New York City. His work has been featured in international publications such as New England Review, Die Zeit Magazine, and Photo World Magazine, as well as in the cover of academic anthologies like "Race, Class and Gender in the United States" (MacMillan, 2020) and "Personal Networks" (Cambridge University Press, 2021). His Time Lapses were also selected for the Art on Link program by the City of New York.
 
Xan Padrón’s career as a photographer is deeply intertwined with his previous profession as a professional musician. For over a decade, he toured with his bass and his camera, capturing life surrounding the musicians he collaborated with. As a photographer of artists and concerts, he has worked in an official capacity for APAP (Association of Performing Arts Professionals, United States) and has contributed to publications such as Inside Arts and The Writer Magazine (United
States).
 
Xan Padrón shares his life with musician, educator, and writer Cristina Pato. Since 2005, he spends his time between
Galicia and New York City and has his studio at Mana Contemporary (NJ).

XAN PADRON'S PORTFOLIO