Fragments (2018-2020) is a collaborative web-based animation project with Duke University’s Michael Zhang.

To see the animation: https://fragments.peterghoffman.com/
Additionally: Project Github Page
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Fragments was to be installed at Duke University's Rubenstein Arts Center in the Spring of 2020, before the pandemic caused its cancellation.

The info below was the text to accompany the installation:

Photographers have a history of using the process of image making to become familiar with their subject matter. Being a new resident of Durham as of 2016, I struggled to get a sense of the city because of the intense pace of change in the built environment. Recalling the idea of coming to know the city through walking, as practiced by Eugene Atget and other Parisian artists at the turn of the 20th century, I set out to do the same in Durham beginning in the fall of 2018.

Using a city map that indicates the sites of active demolition and development projects near the downtown core, I would periodically go on long walks from my apartment and plan to pass by one or more of these sites and making photographs along the way. 

The images from the walks accumulate into a database where they are compiled into generative collages using a series of Photoshop processes. The pieces are then reassembled into something approaching the complete original image before being disassembled and morphing into a new aggregate scene of the city. The gridded nature of the transitions is a nod to the prototypical urban grid, but the cut-up nature of the pieces themselves is entirely dependent on the generative processes used, and changes depending on what other photographs and images are blended together with. Each image is collaged with other images that were made on the same day, before fading into a new day. In this sense, any singular moment, however abstract on the screen can be said to offer evidence of a singular day in Durham.