The Times of Photography

Abstract

In this chapter I consider the way that photography shapes our sense of time, especially the relations between past, present and future. I pay most attention to the way that the making of a photograph, the time of its exposure, does this. This, in turn, has implications for other ways in which the photograph and time are connected, in for example, the processes of memory and historical time, although these are not discussed so fully here. I argue that the peculiar temporality of the photograph arises between the moment of exposure and the subsequent material life of a photograph. In principle this temporality is common to both analogue and digital photographs in as much as they are both indexical images. Indeed, it accounts for the continuing power and value of photography in its digital form. Yet, this is often hidden (or forgotten), as discussions of digital photography tend to emphasise change and the electronic ‘speed-up’ of what was the already considerable ‘mechanical velocity’¹ of analogue photography. Where, with respect to photography’s temporality, digital technology has encouraged or afforded other kinds of change, I note them as my argument proceeds.