I’m reading a book right now called In Search of Time: The History, Physics, and Philosophy of Time. Are the past and the future happening at once, in an eternal now? If so, how possibly to apprehend that possibility beyond the concept, beyond just typing it?
I love this quote by Stephen Shore. “I was photographing every meal I ate, every person I met, every waiter or waitress who served me, every bed I slept in, every toilet I used.” And then he slowed down a bit by changing cameras. Photographs are sometimes as close as we’re going to come to remembering things that we did and felt, whether we took the picture or not. Because unlike a movie, a photograph tells our story rather than someone else’s. We move into the moment.
Stephen Shore (I have the same table)
In In Search of Time, the author, Dan Falk, proposes that neuroscientifically speaking “the act of remembering is indeed very similar to the act of imagining the future.” This is a random selection of photographs (they literally came to mind) that, for me, “talk” about time, ask me to consider how a photograph of a single moment, one opening and closing of an aperture, both travels into the future and connects with other photographs. And will continue to do so. We can imagine the future life of pictures. Though they move in silence, giving no explanation.
poumons-optiques, me (still of film on my laptop)
Jochen Lempert (my current screensaver)
Julianne Swartz
Sylvia de Swaan
Aya Fujioka
Francesca Woodman
Gordon Parks
“What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.”—John Berger
Robert Rauschenberg
“As a relentless gatherer of moments, I find that my favorite images, although grounded in the present, are like spirits shaped by memories. They whisper of fairy tales, poetry, and other lives, as each gesture connects with another and raises yet another from the dead. Shadows flicker on film to an inner melody as I navigate, camera at hand and at the speed of light, through unimaginable worlds—desperately trying to make sense of the joy and suffering before it all disappears.”—Sylvia Plachy
Lisa McCarty
Stephen Shore
Darren Almond
Jen Kinney
Chris McCaw
From “Evidence” by Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel
Tacita Dean
Aaron Canipe
Sylvia Plachy
“Someone will remember us
I say
Even in another time”
—Sappho, translated by Anne Carson
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It is our pleasure to welcome Alexa Dilworth as our May guest blog contributor. We had the pleasure of getting acquainted with Alexa at SlowExposures Photography Festival. Serving as Publishing and Awards Director and Center of Documentary Studies Books Editor at Duke University, Alexa had a very insightful interview by Aline Smithson published on Lenscratch that is a must read!
Thank you, Alexa, for joining us today.
