The passage of time, as represented in photograpy, was the subject of today's photo class. How do you show the passage of time in a single photograph? A series?
We looked at slides of street views - shutter left open for a long period of time. What shows up in the photo? What disappears?
We also spent time looking at rephotography. We've all seen rephotography but I'd never heard it called as such before. She showed us some really interesting work done by a man named Mark Klett. http://www.thirdview.org/3v/home/index.html
Klett rephotographed a bunch of sites in the Western United States that were originally taken by Timothy O'Sullivan and others, as a part of a USGS natural resources survey in 1860's and '70's. He put together a book called, "Second View" of those shots in the 1970's. In 1997 he went back again and the culmination of that work is his latest book, "Third View."
Googling "rephotography" will show you a ton of different examples of rephotography that I think are interesting to those interested in photography or history or ???
Our assignment for next week is to consider how to represent the passage of time with respect to your site (mine is the Hult Center) in your photographs. I'm considering doing some research to see what photos I can find of the Hult Center from it's construction and grand opening. It would be fun to also show the neighborhood around the Hult Center to see what's still there from when the facility first opened. I'm still looking for inspiration...
Finally, I thought it humorous that in my next class today, perspective drawing, the passage of time became relevant again... as when I started my drawing of the hallway, the hallway wall was dark and the window alcove was light. However, it took me so long to grok the curved lines of the alcove tha
t by the time I went to shade the alcove, the shadows were reversed. Sigh. Fast at drawing I am not. But I'm learning a ton. And I'm enjoying myself immensely. And the subject matter from one class (landscape and architectural photography) quite often spills over into perspective drawing and vice versa.
t by the time I went to shade the alcove, the shadows were reversed. Sigh. Fast at drawing I am not. But I'm learning a ton. And I'm enjoying myself immensely. And the subject matter from one class (landscape and architectural photography) quite often spills over into perspective drawing and vice versa. On the way home from school I decided to play around with showing the passage of time with my crappy camera phone (only camera within reach when I was driving). I decide
d to take a photograph, from right in front of my face, every 15 seconds until I got home. The results were terrible because of the poor quality of the camera phone but I can see potential in this experiement.
d to take a photograph, from right in front of my face, every 15 seconds until I got home. The results were terrible because of the poor quality of the camera phone but I can see potential in this experiement. Some intersections (and the backs of a couple vehicles) were very well documented - because I sat there for a minute or more. Other really interesting sections of road - with lots of elevation changes, were not as well documented because, of course, the elevation change happens rapidly and thus is only recorded with possibly one photo.
It was fun and interesting and food for thought for the next experiment...
