1. Passing of Time
AS PHOTOGRAPHY EXAMINATION
February 2012
Monday, 23 January 12
2. 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.
Monday, 23 January 12
3. Edweard Muybridge,
Galloping Horses,
1878
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.
Monday, 23 January 12
4. Eugene Atget
Coin de la Rue Valette et Pantheon
1925
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5. “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
Monday, 23 January 12
6. 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.
Monday, 23 January 12
8. “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.”
Monday, 23 January 12
9. "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
Monday, 23 January 12
10. 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.
Keith Arnatt Self-Burial (Television Interference Project) 1969
Monday, 23 January 12
11. 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."
Monday, 23 January 12
12. 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?
Monday, 23 January 12
13. “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
Monday, 23 January 12
14. Bill Viola Nantes Triptych 1992
Video and mixed media
duration: 29 min., 46 sec. installation
Monday, 23 January 12
15. John Baldessari Six
Colorful Inside Jobs,
1977
16mm 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.
Monday, 23 January 12
16. John Baldessari
The 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?
Monday, 23 January 12
17. Andy Goldsworthy
Above: Hazel stick throw
LYC, Cumbria
10 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.
Monday, 23 January 12
19. Ed Ruscha Every Building on The Sunset Strip, 1966
Other photo books by Ed Ruscha
Monday, 23 January 12
20. Francis Alÿs
Paradox 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.
Monday, 23 January 12
21. 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
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
bursting. His final, cathartic, joyful cry is one of the great moments in the history of
recent British art."
Monday, 23 January 12
22. Shomei Tomatsu Atomic Bomb Damage:
Wristwatch Stopped at 11:02, August 9, 1945,
1961
Monday, 23 January 12
23. 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)?
Monday, 23 January 12
