Szarkowski: Time.

Oprah Winfrey in Copenhagen. Copyright 2010: Knut Skjærven.

“Photographs stand in special relation to time, for they describe only the present.

Exposures were long in early photography. If the subjects moved, its multiple image described also a space-time dimension. Perhaps it was such accidents that suggested the photographic study of the process of movement, and later, of the virtual forms produced by the continuity of movement in time.

Photographers found an inexhaustible subject in the isolation of a single segment of time. They photographed the horse in midstride, the fugitive expressions of the human face, the gestures of the hand and body, the bat meeting the ball, the milk drop splashing in the saucer of milk.

More subtle was the discovery of that segment of time that Cartier-Bresson called the decisive moment: decisive not because of the exterior event (the bat meeting the ball) but because in that moment the flux of changing forms and patterns was sensed to have achieved balance and clarity and order – because the image became, for an instant, a picture.”

John Szarkowski: The Photographers Eye, The Museum of Modern Art, New York 2009.

Library Thing.

This is a barebones pitstop post. For more pitstop posts, please go to pitstop puzzle.

Other posts on Szarkowski: Introduction, The Thing Itself, The Detail, The Frame, Time, Vantage Point.

Sleep Walking Watchmen

The SleepWalkers. Copyright 2009: Knut Skjærven.

Maybe you did not know this. The Royal Guard in Copenhagen, Denmark, have been at it for a couple of 100 years. They have such a routine in their job (guarding the Danish Queen and/or King) that they now do it with their eyes shut. Believe it or not.

Clever they are.

And a good weekend to you, as well .