Color, focus, density

The three images produce an eery effect, moving from a more focused but low-resolution image of a man amidst smog to a mid-density, mid-range black and white image of a polluted cityscape and then finally to a color image, in higher resolution and at a greater distance. I wish I had lingered longer before I read the caption. The author mentions that the movement through time should be implicit and then I wondered whether I noticed it. I think for me it was produced through the coloration and changing resolution of the images, but I wonder whether that was a retroactive observation after reading the comment.