This page is about Time and the thoughts that I have had after reading the work of John Berger, Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag. They are my thought and are not dogmas. Therefore, they ought to be considered as starting point for further thinking. Ultimately, the intention of this page is to allow people to think radially rather than univocally. By expanding the degree by which the mind operates one can create a balanced understanding of his/her inside and outside worlds.
Scripta Manent
The meaning of a photograph changes according to historical time in which the photograph was taken, the time of viewing and the context in which it is shown to the viewer. in other words, time de-cements the initial meaning (and intentions) from the photograph itself.
In a photograph time could be extended at will, depending on the degree of attention the viewer dedicates to it. Roland Barthes claimed that the relationship between photographs and viewer rewrites time as events can be durative or punctual. Time is the continuous progression of events towards their survival or their inevitable end. There are things and people that survive everything whilst there are other things (or people) which time disintegrates. Nonchalantly, time carries on and moves forward without any nostalgia or resentment: it thrusts in one direction caring solely about its own agenda.
Disintegrating Memories
if a story teller is Death’ Secretary, the photographer is Its gallerist. Everything is on its record and everything will be used as evidence aut pro aut contra nos.
The obeservation of certain moments in photographs often helps us to come to terms with the bitterness of the present. People like to tell stories of the once good times before the bad times of today: every grandfather is fine a example of it. Somehow, they make us believe that something has gone lost along the way and life is now too bitter to live without the memory of the old but good.
Tempus Fugit
Any serious discussion about photography encapsulate time as an integral element.
To picture time the historical is a difficult task, let alone picturing the timeless. The photographer’s tasks to be sensitive to an idea articulating in front of him/her and be reactive to it. Nonetheless, words are necessary to complete the discourse put forward by the visual. Consequently, captions are necessary to embalm the initial meaning and purpose of the image. Some captions signify states, other signify processes. Therefore, what could be claimed is that photographs cannot be narratives but, instead, elements of narrative. Photography is motionless with the power to preserve events from the destruction times brings about, and imagination is the only tool one can use to jump from one photograph to another and make sense of the image-sequence: captions are there to provide guidance to imagination. The time needed for imagination to make that jump testify for the photographer’s talent.
Thrusting Forward.
Time has no regard for any of the hierarchies established by men. The man made is subsequent to the universal and so are the pretention that we have about controlling everything. Time can be monitored but not, realistically, frozen like photographs do.
The inexorability of time is undefeated, and it has bee so from the very beginning. the struggle against its unstoppability is a fight which men have tried to win since the moment they realised that there is something proceeding with or without their approval. Time’s authority cannot be challenged neither, and its claims on everything and everyone are inevitable. It is true that we, living beings, desire immortality, however meaning is not immortal. The significance of our life is temporal and only the universally true in everyone of us will survive the loss of cohesion and strength that time brings about.
Planned Obsolescence
Life is designed according to a specific cycle which ensures that everything will go out of date.
Life is designed in a way which makes sure that its existing version becomes dated, and eventually useless, within a given time frame. Photography, instead, privileges a moment which, once turned into an object, aims at immortality. Death cannot be possessed yet, its appropriation is an illusion sold to millions. However, a photograph is a an hymn to mutability which moves us because of the dignity conferred to its subject. Evolution would not be a fact without a memento mori.