We know that time and light are part of a continuum. If we extend a photographic exposure, the hard edges of the strobing points of reality begin to blend. End-of-day photography produces a cascade of changing light exposing our relationship to time.
I spent the summer and early fall imaging people in front of bright backgrounds, usually water or sky. I wanted to reduce the invasion of privacy that a candid photograph brings. I found that crisp-edged silhouets could say so much by taking away detail that they became and end in themselves. The people photographed rarely knew or had the opportunity to react, and the resulting images are anonymous.
As light changes colour and intensity around sunset, the edges begin to blur. The camera reveals different how the human form appears from differing perspectives of time. It also comments on the motion of the photographer and the thinking of the digital light sensor.
In bright light our awareness strobes in such as way that a crisp photo seems most real, and blurred images seem flawed or incoherent. When I encounter small animals like squirrels and insects, whose movements are so quick and lives so short, it occurs to me that the clock rate of their perception may be quite different. Other witnesses like trees and stones, if they could see, would possibly experience us as blurs rather than distinct forms. And so does the camera.
I’ve become interested in how much of the moving human form remains visible during longer exposures. In some images, only the body parts that overlap one another over successive split-seconds register, and the remaining parts blur into the background. We appear ghostly and fleeting.
Fading light creates several phases. In one phase outlines remain crisp. In another the ragged edges of figure and ground overlap. In phase three people seem to morph into otherworldly four-dimensional creatures. Finally the light becomes so weak that under low lamplight they appear as no more than faint clouds of colour.
There may come a day when we explore other worlds, or rediscover our own. We may encounter beings who look much like the entities in these photographs, and maybe we will recognize them as simply living at a different speed.