Places in Time
The blurred hands of the clock in Charles Clifford’s view of Burgos Cathedral (right) remind us that every photograph is made in time, and of time. Time is the raw material of the camera image: history at the scale of the minute hand. Any subject that moves—an expressive face, a galloping horse—imposes time constraints on the camera. Buildings, being immobile, grant a photographer the chance to compose at leisure. Through decisions about lighting (time of day) and vantage point, the photographer can turn a building into a picture’s protagonist, a stage set for projected narratives, or a catalogue of abstract forms. At any given moment, a building discloses only one of the faces it will present throughout time. A photograph made at that moment is a collaboration between the timescale of history and that of an artist at work.
