Times of the Image

We are accustomed to perceiving images primarily as spatial representations, as slices in space. However, the image is as much about time as it is about space.

While it manipulates time by freezing it or setting it in motion, time also works on the image, transforming it and even causing it to vanish. This time is not singular; it is multiple and intertwined. Certainly, history is inscribed within images, but in turn, these images are always inscribed in history. Similarly, the time it takes to capture an image corresponds to the time required to perceive it. The time of reception is always intertwined with the collective time of human communities, and thus, with the realm of politics.

The various dimensions of the temporal aspect of images are explored through thirteen concrete cases, including the experience of duration as felt by Dieter Appelt, the slide as a primitive cinema among contemporary artists, the reconstruction of the history of objects looted by the Germans, and the reuse of Albert Kahn’s Archives of the Planet by Chris Marker.