Photography and captured time (the Punctum)

UMMA's 2019 exhibition Take Your Pick: Collecting Found Photographs was filled with found, personal photographs that present viewers with touching, mysterious, and funny moments from thousands of people's lives.

Watch the video about the exhibition at this webpage: https://umma.umich.edu/exhibitions/2019/take-your-pick-collecting-found-photographs

See the 250 photographs from this exhibition that UMMA visitors voted into our permanent collection by clicking here.

Let's discuss a couple photographs that are rich in this feeling of a singular moment frozen in time.

American Untitled photograph on paper 5 7/8 x 3 1/2 in. (14.92 x 8.89 cm) Gift of Peter J. Cohen, selected by Museum visitors, 2019-2020

American Untitled 20th century photograph | paper Gift of Peter J. Cohen, selected by Museum visitors, 2019-2020 2020/1.344

American Untitled 20th century photograph | paper Gift of Peter J. Cohen, selected by Museum visitors, 2019-2020 2020/1.302

Photography and visualizing time

While photographic technology is essentially a technological means to record the configuration of information encoded in light at a specific moment in space-time, photographers have also used the medium to visualize and explore other experiences of time. Let's discuss the ways the photographs below visually depict time.

Barbara Morgan Martha Graham—Lamentation 1935 gelatin silver print | paper Gift of Frances U. and Scott K. Simonds 1992/1.132	Lesley Dill White Poem Figure (The Soul Has Moments of Escape) unique gelatin silver print on paper 19 15/16 in x 16 in (50.64 cm x 40.64 cm);28 3/16 in x 22 ¼ in (71.6 cm x 56.52 cm) Museum purchase made possible by the Jean Paul Slusser Memorial Fund	Phyllis Price Laura Foster Visits Tom Dooley 20th century black and white photograph | paper Gift from the Collection of David S. Rosen MD, MPH 2014/2.155
Bill Jacobson Song of Sentient Beings #1612 1995 gelatin silver print | paper Museum purchase made possible by the W. Hawkins Ferry Fund 1999/1.102	Eadweard Muybridge Man Climbing Ladder, Plate III 1884 – 1887 collotype | paper Gift of the Marvin Felheim Collection 1983/1.291	Les Klug Portrait of the Artist at Work and Play gelatin silver print | paper Gift of Margaret and Howard Bond 2013/1.252