Mid Sweden University

Part of an ongoing artistic practice dedicated to raising questions about transience and impermanence, this research explores the effects of materiality on the photographic process and experience. 

This research asks: How do antique/analog techniques and materials applied during the photographic process affect the perception of the ‘moment’, both in the photographer’s experience of the process, and the resulting image?

In her State of the Internet report from 2014, analyst Mary Meeker reported that 1.8 billion photographs are uploaded to the Internet each day. [1] The time-consuming practice of analog photography in any format cannot compete with that speed and ease of delivery, and yet analog photography is experiencing a revival[2]. Why?

 William Mitchell asserts, “The difference (between analog and digital photography) is grounded in fundamental physical characteristics that have logical and cultural consequences.” Having started my own practice in the darkroom, worked digitally for years, to now working on an analog series, I am interested in finding out what those ‘consequences’ are and how they relate to the experience of the perception of presence (the moment) and thus memory.

This paper reflects on the experiences of the photographer (myself) and the resulting images of a photographic series work-in-progress with the working title “Contact”[3]. Each exposure is a meditation on the themes of transience and impermanence and strives to create a dialog around the idea of “being present” – advice often repeated in this busy, distracted digital age. While it is possible to explore time passage using both digital and analog techniques, by limiting the process to an antique analog 18x24 view camera, and by using paper negatives with a low ISO, the process is continually forced into a long exposure (several minutes long) where the ideas of ”being present” are not only the work’s inspirational starting point- but also a necessity for creating images.

Additionally this research explores what is meant by “the present” and how is it manifested in analog materials? Psychologist E.R. Clay asserts ‘We are constantly aware of a certain duration—the specious present—varying from a few seconds to probably not more than a minute, and this duration (with its content perceived as having one part earlier and another part later) is the original intuition of time.’[4] If the present is a moving target – lasting only a few seconds, what happens when the photographic process is extended from a fraction of a second, to spread across several moments – thus making a visual document of the past and present – in a single image?

[1] Meeker, Mary http://qz.com/214307/mary-meeker-2014-internet-trends-report-all-the-slides/

[2]BBC http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32337778

[3] Thompson, Linda Maria. Contact: a work in progress 2015. http://www.lindamthompson.com/uncategorized/work-in-progress/

[4] Le Poidevin, Robin, "The Experience and Perception of Time", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2015/entries/time-experience/>.