Thinking about photographing the unseen 05-12-16

I’m thinking about trying to illustrate/suggest/evoke the passage of time. I want to explore Barthes’ ‘new form of hallucination: false on the level of perception, true on the level of time: a temporal hallucination’.(1) I looked at Hiroshi Sugimoto’s image of Cabot Street Cinema, Massachusetts, 1978 taken with an exposure of an hour and a half but it seems to me that without the power of the accompanying text the passage of time is not obvious and certainly not the first or even second thing you think of when looking at the picture.

These images show the lines I’m thinking along. I’ve chosen monochrome images to avoid the distraction of colour which would make some images seem more immediate than others.

I tried this to show a very old fashioned way of writing which would be rare today. Time and styles have moved on.

I don’t think it’s successful because the viewer has to read the text carefully and compare it with more modern expectations. It makes too many demands on the viewer. Its punctum is just too obscure.

 

 

I like this one. The torn teaching poster and the small skeleton fit nicely with the figure’s facial expression. The temporal gaps between the three elements are very clear. It pricks the perception and invites the viewer to look harder.

 

 

 

The contrast between the Knockout Fun Book 1952 and the philosophy texts show a progression of interests. It would have been better if the gap between 1952 and contemporary interests could be filled with a few more titles.

 

 

 

Here the passage of time is indicated by the two figures, one young and whose movement takes no effort, the other old and bowed by the weight of years.

 

 

 

 

The ephemeral footprints in the sand will soon disappear under the approaching tide.

 

 

I took one shot of a moving head. We rehearsed the movement until we were sure to get two more or less clear images with the eyes aligned to make an ambiguous image. This is a brief moment in time.

 

 

 

(1) Camera Lucida 115