Zaman زمن //

Zaman means time in Arabic.

Each work begins as a snapshot, the way most memories begin: an unposed image, taken in the moment because something asked to be kept. A street corner, a flower, a skyline.

Then time does what it always does. Details slip. Colours drift. Whole passages disappear. What remains is not the image but the feeling it leaves behind.

Each Zaman edition holds these three states in a single lenticular print. Walk past it and the photograph breaks apart, sheds its details, and settles into pure colour. Walk back and the memory returns. Nothing is lost: all three states remain in the object, and what you see depends on where you stand.

The first series is devoted to Abu Dhabi. Other cities will follow.

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SERIES 01 // ABU DHABI

The first chapter of Zaman is devoted to the city where the project was born. Its skyline and its deserts, but also its ordinary corners: the places a memory keeps without asking permission.

Further chapters are in preparation.

David Szerer

David Szerer is a French artist based in Abu Dhabi. Trained in architecture and applied design in Paris, he brings a longstanding photographic practice together with an attention to composition, material and scale. In Zaman, he develops his snapshots into three coexisting states, revealed through lenticular printing as the viewer moves. The first series draws on Abu Dhabi and its surroundings.

About the artist

// 01

The lenticular principle

A lenticular print interlaces several images behind a surface of fine optical lenses. Each lens reveals a different image depending on where you stand, so the work changes as you move.

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Zaman uses this print technology for what it does best: holding several moments inside one object. Every edition combines three images. Seen from the front, the photograph. Step to one side and the image corrupts, its details erased. Step to the other side and only a field of colour remains, the impression a memory leaves once everything else is gone.

There is no screen, no motion, no electricity. The movement comes from you, walking past the work.

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From photograph to object

Each work starts from an original snapshot taken by the artist. The choice of scene, framing and light gives the piece its first structure and its palette.

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The erasure
In the studio, the photograph is reworked through shifts, interruptions and colour separation. Parts of the scene stay recognisable while others come apart. Each erasure is composed for its image.

The abstraction
A field of colour is composed from the photograph's own palette. It carries those colours into a state where the scene no longer needs to be recognised.

The lenticular print
The three states are interlaced and printed by a specialist lenticular atelier, then mounted in a custom solid oak frame. Between two states, traces of more than one image can be visible: this is part of the medium, and part of the work.

Every work is produced in two sizes, each in a numbered edition of 100, signed, and delivered with a certificate of authenticity.