Beyond the Decisive Moment

Latent spaces and sustained exposure in photomedia

Authors

  • Sonia Mangiapane

Keywords:

latent image, snapshot, duration, cameraless photography, process

Abstract

Traditionally, exposure time in photography has been defined as the temporal gap between the shutter opening and closing, the time of the snapshot. This view presupposes that the only significant time that exists within an image is the moment a photograph is ‘taken’, thereby failing to account for a wide range of temporal processes and concepts of time in photography that fall outside of this narrow timespan. Consequently, processes embodied in a photographic object—the time of the latent image, processing, editing, post-production and gazing, for example—have no temporal currency and are rendered theoretically invisible. Furthermore, the snapshot fails to account for nonrepresentational and cameraless photomedia processes in which a link to a camera shutter, let alone an ‘event’, is entirely absent.

In this paper, I argue that such temporal—albeit often invisible—processes contribute significantly to the time-space of a photograph or photographic image- object. Firstly, I interrogate the theoretical significance of the latent image, building upon Daniel Rubinstein’s theories of photographic durations through my own concept of ‘sustained exposure’. Rubinstein claims there are two temporal registers involved in image production: image capture and the latent image. Meanwhile, I propose and outline a further three temporal registers: time of post-production, time of the public gaze, and time of the dormant archive. Secondly, I explore how nonrepresentational subject matter in photography, and cameraless processes (à la Concrete Photography) in particular, draw time out over a continuum—the resulting image loses its indexical link to an event and starts to enter into a metaphysical realm. Abstract and Concrete photography confronts audiences with a new kind of moment: one independent of chronological and historical time, which, through different forms of presentation, can connect to other timescales—geological, cosmic, speculative and imagined.

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Author Biography

Sonia Mangiapane

Sonia Mangiapane is a photomedia artist, photographer and independent researcher currently based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. She holds a master'sdegree in Lens-based Media from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, Netherlands and a bachelor's degree in Visual Communication from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. In her artistic practice she works with media and processes defined primarily by their use of light, as opposed to the exclusive use of the camera, employing both camera-based and cameraless methods. Her research interests include concepts relating to travel, Nature and notions of photographic time.

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Published

20.10.2022

How to Cite

Mangiapane, S. (2022). Beyond the Decisive Moment: Latent spaces and sustained exposure in photomedia. Archivo Papers, 2(2), 59–75. Retrieved from http://archivopapersjournal.com/ojs/index.php/apj/article/view/52