"Time matters"

Reflections on time, photography, and labour

Authors

Abstract

With regard to the early days of photography, Roland Barthes (1982) described cameras as “clocks for seeing”. Taking this statement as the starting point, the following essay explores how the relationship between photography and time has been strongly shaped by capitalist modes of production since its inception. The essay addresses the work of several artists and photographers, from the early days of photography to the present, and places them in dialogue with texts on time, labour and photography. The essay is divided into three parts. The first part analyses time-motion studies conducted by Eadweard J. Muybridge, Étienne-Jules Marey and Frank and Lilian Gilbreth in the 1880s, focusing on how the aesthetics of these photographs were deeply entangled with notions of time and efficiency endorsed by industrial capitalism. The second part addresses the existing gap between human and mechanical time, by rereading Man Ray’s Indestructible Object (1964) and Tehching Hsieh’s Clock Piece (1980-1981) in relation to notions of discipline and chrononormativity (Foucault, 1969; Freeman, 2010). The third part of the essay introduces the work of artists, such as Erwin Wurm, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, or Hiroshi Sugimoto. I analyse the tactics they use for resisting and escaping the “tyranny of the clock” (Woodcock, 1944) and place them in relation to my own practice as a photographer. All in all, I argue that each photograph embodies a very particular way of understanding time that embraces, resists or escapes capitalist modes of producing value. By analysing specific aspects of photography, the text brings to the forefront the (often hidden) politics of time embedded in the photographic medium.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Marta Labad, U-TAD. University of Technology, Arts and Design

Marta is PhD in Fine Arts (Department of Art History) with a thesis titled "Timeand labor under neoliberalism through artistic practices" and holds a MFA Photo 09 from RISD, thanks to a Fulbright Grant. She was trained as an architect and artist and has been recently awarded a predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowship in the field of Fine Arts and Architecture. She taught Photography at RISD and will be teaching Photography at U-TAD next semester. She has shown her pictures at several group shows in Spain and abroad.

References

BARTHES, Roland. Camera Lucida, Hilla and Wang, New York, 1982.

BENJAMIN, Walter. On Photography, London, Reaktion Books, 2015.

BURBRIDGE, Ben. Photography After Capitalism, Goldsmith Press, London, 2020.

CANALES, Jimena. A Tenth of a Second. A History. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2009.

CHAMAYOU, Grégoire. “Patterns of life”, in: Nervous Systems, (Ed.) Anselm Franke, Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszyinski, Spector Books, Leipzig, 2016.

FREEMAN, Elizabeth. Time binds: queer temporalities, queer histories, Duke University Press, Durham, 2010.

FOUCAULT, Michel. Discipline and Punish, 154. New York, Vintage Books, 1979.

FONTCUBERTA, Joan. El beso de Judas. Fotografía y verdad. Editorial Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2015.

GILBRETH, Frank and Lilian. Applied Motion Study, Sturgis&Waton Company, New York, 1917.

GORDON, Sarah. Indecent Exposures. Edweard Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion Nudes.

GROOM, Amelia. Time. Documents of Contemporary Art. The Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2013.

HALWES, Shannon. “Man Ray, objects 1916-1921: the role of aesthetics in the art of idea.” MFA Thesis, Houston, Rice University, 1990. https://hdl.handle.net/1911/103398.

NADAR. Memorias de un fotógrafo. Casimiro Libros, Madrid, 2019.

RABINBACH, Anson. The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity, California, University of California Press, 1992.

SAINT AGUSTINE, The Confessions of Saing Agustine, Sheed&Ward, New York, 1959.

SCHWARZ, Arturo. Man Ray: The Rigour of Imagination. Thames and Hudson, London, 1977.

SOLNIT, Rebecca. River of Shadows. Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West. Peguin books, New York, 2004.

THOMPSON, E. P. “Time,work-discipline, and industrial capitalism”, Past and Present, no.1, vol. 38, (dec. 1967): 56-97.

WINSLOW TAYLOR, Francis. The Principles of Scientific Management, Harper&Brothers Publishers, New York, and London, 1919.

CHARLES CHAPLIN, Modern Times (1936).

BUSTER KEATON, Electric House (1922).

Downloads

Published

31.05.2022

How to Cite

Labad, M. (2022). "Time matters": Reflections on time, photography, and labour. ARCHIVO PAPERS, 2(1), 23–38. Retrieved from http://archivopapersjournal.com/ojs/index.php/apj/article/view/35