Passing of Time presentation

February 2012

Passing of TimeAS PHOTOGRAPHY EXAMINATION

Monday, 23 January 12

Passing of Time

Some photographers, videomakers and filmmakers have chosen to represent the passing of time in different ways. various techniques have been employed to produce single images or a series of images. Look at relevant examples and create a personal response.


Was there a moment midstride when horses had all hooves off the ground? It was 1872 when Leland Stanford hired noted landscape photographer Eadweard Muybridge to figure it out. It took years, but Muybridge delivered: He rigged a racetrack with a dozen strings that triggered 12 cameras. Muybridge not only proved Stanford right but also set off the revolution in motion photography that would become movies.

Edweard Muybridge, Galloping Horses, 1878


Eugene AtgetCoin de la Rue Valette et Pantheon1925


“Often the central thought of an image by Atget consists in the confrontation of two opposing ideas: the grandiose and the humble, the elegant and the commonplace, the past and the present, the static and the moving, the light and the dark. The symbolism that this engenders is especially prevalent in the Paris work. A photograph of a doorway with an ornately carved coat of arms may be the ostensible reason for the existence of that photograph. But this tiny remnant of an artistocratic ancien regime, now surrounded by the rising tide of a bourgeois society and its petty commerce, reminds us that new life forever feeds on the decay of the old. Even the double image of a woman in the doorway adds its commentary to the flux of time.”

Text by James Borcoman, from Eugene Atget, 1857-1927


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Steven Pippin Laundromat/Locomotion 1999

Laundromat/Locomotion is the result of a project that Pippin conducted in a New Jersey laundromat where he transformed washing machines into cameras. As an homage to the locomotion studies of Eadweard Muybridge, Pippin connected trip wires to a row of twelve front-loading washing machines and proceeded to walk, run, and ride a horse through the laundromat, thus creating his own contemporary motion studies. Pippin's unorthodox technique also included developing the photographs in the wash and rinse cycles of the machines.


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“We seek the interior essence of things: pure movement; and we prefer to see everything in motion,since as things are dematerialized in motion they become idealized, while still retaining, deep down, a strong skeleton of truth. This is our aim, and it is by these means that we are attempting to raise photography to the heights which today it strives impotently to attain, being deprived of the elements essential for such an elevation because of the criteria of order that make it conform with the precise reproduction of reality. And then, of course, it is also dominated by that ridiculous and brutal negative element, the instantaneous exposure, which has been presented as a great scientific strength when in fact it is a laughable absurdity.”


"Alexey Titarenko's intriguing photographs... instead of seizing an instant and preserving it intact, they embrace a span of time, allowing it to pass and leave just a trace ... In one especially poignant example from 1999, an older Russian woman in archetypal heavy coat, scarf and boots sits on the pavement, that seems to erode beneath her ... The picture brings to mind Dorothea Lange's 'White Angel Bread Line' of 1932 in its stunning portrait of the singularity of suffering." -- Leah Ollman THE LOS ANGELES TIMES


Keith Arnatt Self-Burial (Television Interference Project) 1969

Arnatt was fascinated with works of art that are created in the natural landscape but leave no trace of their presence behind. ‘The continual reference to the disappearance of the art object suggested to me the eventual disappearance of the artist himself’, he wrote. This sequence of photographs was broadcast on German television in October 1969. One photo was shown each day, for about two seconds, sometimes interrupting whatever programme was being shown at peak viewing time. They were neither announced nor explained – viewers had to make what sense of them they could.


Andy Warhol Empire 1964

Empire consists of a single stationary shot of the Empire State Building filmed from 8:06 p.m. to 2:42 a.m., July 25–26, 1964. The eight-hour, five-minute film, which is typically shown in a theater, lacks a traditional narrative or characters. The passage from daylight to darkness becomes the film’s narrative, while the protagonist is the iconic building that was (and is again) the tallest in New York City. Warhol lengthened Empire's running time by projecting the film at a speed of sixteen frames per second, slower than its shooting speed of twenty-four frames per second, thus making the progression to darkness almost imperceptible. Non-events such as a blinking light at the top of a neighboring building mark the passage of time. According to Warhol, the point of this film—perhaps his most famous and influential cinematic work—is to "see time go by."


Sam Taylor-Wood A Little Death, 2002, 35mm film/DVD, duration: 4’

This stop motion animation speeds up the slow disintegration of a rabbit carcass so that we are reminded of the inevitable decay of our own bodies. The artist has created similar films featuring bowls of fruit.

What is she saying about the passage of time in theses films? How has time itself been distorted, as it is in our perceptions and memories?


“I think the idea of looking at say a Caravaggio painting or another painting from one, two, or even three hundred years ago and seeing that artists are still dealing with exactly the same thought process and the same sort of questions - questions that generally come from the themes of our mortality and what it means to be human, or smaller themes such as the passing of time, or simple moments that are captured for eternity, these themes that evolve around life and love and death have obsessed artists from day one and I am equally obsessed with these themes. For me, referencing is a way of showing that through the centuries things really haven’t changed at all. We are still looking at and trying to figure out the same grand questions about our existence.”

Sam Taylor-Wood


Bill Viola Nantes Triptych 1992Video and mixed mediaduration: 29 min., 46 sec. installation


John Baldessari Six Colorful Inside Jobs, 197716mm film transferred to video (color, silent), 32:53 min

In "Six Colorful Inside Jobs" John Baldessari draws a parallel between a double process of life and creation. The video shows a room being painted in six different colors, each color of the spectrum corresponding to a day of the week. This work, which started as a performance/installation, integrates the artist as a comic figure faced with contemporary history 'that of American painting' and shifts his function toward that of a house painter. Through this form of irony, Baldessari shows to what extent instruments and materials help him define the subtle limits between art and work, art and life.


John BaldessariThe Artist Hitting Various Objects with a Golf Club (detail), 1972-3

Some artists have used photography to document their conceptual experiments. here Baldessari captures a seemingly absurd and futile process in a sequence of images.

Why is photography perfectly suited to this kind of artistic activity?


Andy Goldsworthy

Above: Hazel stick throwLYC, Cumbria10 July 1980

Below: Hand hit site dust, Presidio Spire October 2008.

Goldsworthy is a sculptor who works with the land and natural processes. He uses photography to document his actions which are often ephemeral. He relies on the ability of the camera to record these subtle interventions and supply him with a work of art which can be sold.


Ed Ruscha Every Building on The Sunset Strip, 1966

Other photo books by Ed Ruscha


Francis AlÿsParadox of Praxis I (Sometimes Doing Something Leads to Nothing) Mexico City, 1997

Paradox of Praxis I 1997 shows an absurd expenditure of effort, as Alÿs pushed a block of ice around the 'Centre' until it melted. The subtitle of the work is 'Sometimes Doing Something Leads to Nothing', an idea which speaks to the frustrated efforts of everyday Mexico City residents to improve their living conditions.


video - the officers are trying to remain still and quiet for the full hour but the strain gradually builds and they shuffle and flex.The Daily Telegraph's Richard Dorment describes how one officer succeeded in remaining near-motionless the whole time until told that time was up. He then "lets out a yelp of relief that you can hear all over the gallery. The moment is like a dam

Gillian Wearing 60 Minutes Silence 1997

Wearing uses real people, usually from where she lives in south east London, to create her art. One such example is 60 Minutes Silence, which at first sight is a lifesize photo of 26 police officers. Eventually, the viewer realises that the work is a

bursting. His final, cathartic, joyful cry is one of the great moments in the history of recent British art."


Shomei Tomatsu Atomic Bomb Damage: Wristwatch Stopped at 11:02, August 9, 1945, 1961


Questions to ask yourself:

How is our understanding of time relative? For example, why does a minute sometimes feel like an hour?

How have some photographers attempted to break away from the notion of the photograph as a split second?

How can a still image convey a sense of the passage of time?

How many different meanings and/or uses of the word “time” can you think of?

How do you notice time passing? How could a camera help you document this process?

How do we measure time?

Do you have a favourite time (of the day, of your life)?


Passing of Time presentation

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