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Christian Weber Questions the Body Language of Relationships, While Sheila Heti Ponders Their Very Necessity

A fascination with eastern spirituality led New York-based photographer and director Christian Weber to work on Speak and Spell, a series of photographs that examine human gesture.

This spurred a collaboration with art directors Marius Zorrilla and Kiku Aromir and writer Toni Segarra on a new short film, Candor, that analyzes the requirements for a successful relationship. Influenced by the early short films of Peter Greenaway as well as Jørgen Leth’s 1967 classic The Perfect Human, the graphic nature of the black-and-white film here accentuates the dramatic texture of skin. “For me it was trying to walk that fine line between creating animations or illustrations of the work, but actually leaving in human gestures and self-conscious moments,” explains Weber, whose clients include Levi’s, Myspace and Bottega Veneta.

“Whether it’s the tapping of the fingers, the way you embrace somebody’s hand or the way you cross your finger over somebody else’s—all of those things mean something. That was part of the underlying tone here: that pure human honesty or candor that exists in our relationships, and how we interact with each other.”