Day 230 Ephemeral

July 27, 2015

(This is part of a 365 project during my 70^th year where I write and illustrate a blog on each day’s gift.)

The National Gallery of Art exhibit, The Memory of Time.  
“I stop being just the observer of light, as it spills into the house and moves through it in the course of the day. Here I have become a participant in creating these images of light  I am moving the curtain to change the formation of a line of light that starts out being razor-thin and over the hours grows into a thick band of light.” ~ Uta Barth

The relationship of time and truth to photography continually prods me. With some hubris, I delude myself that I have power over time with a slight movement of a finger on a shutter. I believe that I can capture the present—a moment of meaning—and suspend it within time’s dervish. Light waves of truth bend around my perception. In the future, I can return to this past and re-arrange it to create my own reality. When photographing, I am always in the present but when looking at photos, I am in the past.

Today I saw a thought-provoking photography exhibit at the National Gallery of Art, The Memory of Time. The introduction describes it as “…work by artists who investigate the richness and complexity of photography’s relationship to time, memory, and history.”

From a very early age, I have always held a sensitivity to the power of light and shadow. Lives slide through this narrative landscape of light and shadow but the edges never remain the same because light constantly moves. Maybe this is why I was especially struck by Uta Barth’s triptych of light entitled “to draw a bright white line with light.” She immerses us in the transient nature of light and shadow. I stepped back to take a photo of the three photo panels with David standing in front of them. 

Truth is always a subtle blurring of time, light and memory.

My gift today is The Memory of Time.

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> Day 231: Coming Home

You can find links to my other posts on this project here:
http://bjschupp.blogspot.com/2014/12/365-gifts.html