Tim Richmond, Jörg Colberg, Joselito Verschaeve, Jessica Gianelli, Moe Suzuki, and Julia Gat reflect on the concept of time 

In relation to photography, the concept of time is manifold. The medium is inherently temporal, with the ability to immortalise a moment or memory in an instant. The notion of photographic truth is tried and contested, but images have a unique power to transport us to different times, or equally, to act as portals into psychological landscapes that transcend it. Time can also be a theme in photography. Throughout history, imagemakers have documented people and places over days, months, years and decades, using the camera to record and observe change within communities. And as human beings, time consumes us all. We organise our lives by it, using time as a measure and anchor to celebrate and contextualise our collective human experiences.

Here, Tim Richmond, Jörg Colberg, Joselito Verschaeve, Jessica Gianelli, Moe Suzuki, and Julia Gat reflect on the concept of time in relation to an image from their archive.

Tim Richmond

This image from my recent book, Love Bites, weighs heavily with the theme ‘Time’. I was photographing nightclubs in Weston-super-Mare and Bridgwater – this one was a poledancing club. It was a damp, rainy January night. The club was empty bar the pole-dancers and one or two solitary drinkers, almost waiting for something, or someone, to enter the club. The woman in this photograph had been there a while when I asked to photograph her. She sat as I took a few pictures on my tripod-mounted camera. Visual clues of time, like empty bottles, body language, and a strong sense of waiting, ooze from the image. We have all been there, waiting and sensing time in a reverie. I love that photographs bring an unwritten narrative to the fore, each of us seeking out our version of what has happened.

timrichmond.co.uk

Jörg Colberg

I took this photograph in 2019 in Hamburg. But everything about it reminds me of a bar near an apartment building in Wilhelmshaven, where I grew up in the 1970s. Even as the past is irrevocably gone, photography has the uncanny ability to evoke feelings that make us reconnect with an earlier era. It shows the presence of that era in our present.

When I think about the past, there are always a number of very different sensations. Photographs only centre on what is visible. But they often evoke something else: the feeling of rain falling onto my skin, wind blowing through my hair, or here, the pungent smell left behind by years and years of people smoking cigarettes while drinking beer.

Photographs cut a brief moment out of the continuum of time, but often they evoke feelings more than they express facts.

jmcolberg.com

Joselito Verschaeve

I am interested in the past and future, and timelessness in relation to dystopia. In my images I often try to remove notions of time and space. I do this by photographing subjects that are present regardless of time, or by using black-and-white images that restrain information and give room for interpretation. Eliminating these indicators makes it easier to sequence images from different places and to create a dialogue or flow. This is also how I’m able to create most of my work in my close surroundings, while giving the impression of a multitude of temporal locations.

joselitoverschaeve.com

Jessica Gianelli

he first time you meet someone holds a great degree of mystery, tucked neatly into the mystery that is time itself. Two individuals consciously engage in offering a slight opening to their respective personas, and allow the other to see them. This image was taken on the day I first met Lauren, a young woman from Nottingham, who I connected with via social media. Easing our way into the then-recent opening of a post-lockdown world, Lauren and I agreed to meet at my flat in south-east London.

We sit in my kitchen, and an inexplicable familiarity begins to settle between us. She sits, I follow, and we start to do something of a dance, where unfolding exchanges are met by a certain languid intimacy. Through the doublesided mirror that exists between us, Lauren and I somehow become mirrors for one another. We utilise the act of looking as a contention towards a willingness to see, and an ultimate desire for connection. Light enters through my kitchen window, and we are taken through the day by a falling sun – our new friendship sunburnt into 120mm film.

jessicagianelli.com

Moe Suzuki

The average lifespan of a house in Japan is said to be 30 years. When the ‘time’ comes – due to natural disasters, the limited lifespan of wooden houses, or constantly renewed urban planning – old houses are swept away and the townscape is transformed. Once houses are demolished, they are overwritten by a new townscape and visual memories that become blurred over time. In this project, I attempt to go back in time, tracing fragmented memories along the narrow alleys of my neighbourhood in downtown east Tokyo, Shitamachi.

banyan-b-i.com

Julia Gat

For several years, my everyday camera was my grandmother’s old pointand- shoot: a small, handy Olympus. I used it so often that, little by little, it started breaking apart. After spending years in my grandmother’s closet, it found itself over-exploited by an enthusiastic, freshly graduated photographer. Last year, the camera accidentally double-exposed three times the film’s length. For six months, it was rolling back and forth, layering images. Connections were made between various contexts, and this one in particular caught my eye. Both characters are strangely held, in full introspection. The image sums up how I felt during these six months: an incredibly hectic post-graduation phase, with people and work and life becoming fuller by the minute. Those in-between moments, where people around me were taking the time, are the moments that reminded me to breathe as well.

juliagatphotography.com

Read more from our ‘Picture This’ series

Ken Grant

I first went onto the Bidston Moss in Merseyside in 1989. The walk from the docks up onto the hill was a long mile or so, past men fishing as others burned copper wire bare from its trunking. I photographed there, on and off, until 1997, when decades of perished waste were grassed over. When curators looked at the pictures, some mentioned Mr Kurtz and his journey into darkness, but I didn’t recognise that fear or distance, and left. Others imagined how different these situations were from my own, but I had to tell them that I believed I was photographing my contemporaries, as I always do. I’d known some of the men from the wood yards and parks, from years wandering the docks. Remembering the trust and kindness of those like Macca, who seemed to know what I was doing would never bring danger, it’s clear, to me at least, that the only distance in this picture is time.

Ying Ang

Five months and counting. He walks deserted streets. Rising concrete and glass monoliths. He speaks to no one, touches nothing. He knows only what I tell him – it is winter, a coat is necessary, the outside is dangerously unclean. We play hide-and-seek in the rain, the slick roads mirroring a metropolis built for people and inhabited by none. In October, he will be three. It will be one-sixth of his life where people cross the road when they see you and step out of elevators in fear, half-faced.” 

I wrote this in June 2020. We were just one quarter through the longest lockdown in the world. My son is four now and struggles to speak to anyone outside of his immediate family. Selective mutism, they call it. We are asked questions in psychological screenings, such as, ‘Has there been a trauma in your family?’ I am never quite sure how to answer. 

Lin Zhipeng

I took this photo by accident in early 2018. I have been photographing my life, my experiences and my friends for 17 years. I photograph the stories of the LGBTQ+ community, and I photograph the relationships between people and objects, and my own connection to the world. I consider these various relationships as kind of ‘invisible’ to society. They do exist in the form of mutual trust. Trust is the most basic condition in all relationships. With trust, the relationship between people and the world can be continued.

Ana Vallejo

Last year, queer couple Hayley and Nathan allowed me to photograph glimpses of what their love looked like. After they told me their story the second time we met, their eyes were glowing like fireflies. The third time we met, Hayley had twisted her ankle that same day. Not only was she in pain, but being a dancer, she felt uncertain about her near future. Nathan was focused on making her feel better. Their interactions were loving and caring. At the moment when I took this photograph, they were giggling and tickling each other. 

When we are vulnerable and in front of a camera, difficult emotions can surface unexpectedly. Everyone involved has to be grounded to express with confidence what’s enjoyable and what’s uncomfortable as we step out of conventions and into the unknown. It was meaningful to feel their trust in me, it was comforting to feel I could trust them as well. Being part of their world for a few days felt warm, soft and tender.

Craig Easton

Trust is a strange and enigmatic concept. People seem to use the word often when talking about my pictures, but it’s not something I’m especially conscious of. I photograph people… sometimes people I get to know over months or years, sometimes ‘passing strangers’ as Sternfeld so succinctly described that brief but intense encounter we photographers have with those we meet.

Bank Top was both – some people I spoke to for months before making a picture, some were passing strangers. I approach them both in the same way, genuinely interested to hear their stories. When I ask if I can make a portrait (and bring out a big, wooden 10×8 camera), I am asking for their trust. Trust that I will be truthful and represent the person as I see them, with dignity.

And it’s an extraordinary gift they give me, for which I’m grateful and do the best I can.

Kemka Ajoku

I’ve always felt the need to stand up for myself. I thought that if I couldn’t do it, then no one would do it for me. This was the phase of my life I found myself in for the last three years, and the one I have gradually crawled out of. 

Family and community are two things that have shaped who I am, two themes that keep recurring in my personal work. Learning to unpack who I am not only as an artist, but as a person, allowed me to learn more about myself and the things that influence me today.

Fascinated by the resilience of the artist Frida Kahlo, I wished to explore her theme of solidarity and duality with this image, having sisters Joanna and Jemima sat together holding each other’s hands; a subtle indication of unity and strength that only twins can share. 

kemkaajoku.com

Todd R Darling

28 March, 2017 – Paterson, NJ, United States: In the raucous gallery, citizens deliver impassioned pleas to relieve them of another corrupt politician. Elected officials separate themselves from the people who elected them with barriers and a distance of stale, tacky carpet. They sit in leather thrones while the people must stand to address them. They judge the citizenry as if they were the smartest people in the room instead of the most greedy. The council votes in favour of the embattled mayor, allowing him to keep his job as he faces criminal charges. They’re probably fearful of the precedent it might set that may expose them later should they become mayors and face corruption charges. 

Later, Joey Torres is convicted and sent to prison in disgrace. He is the second mayor of three in 20 years convicted of corruption in Paterson. Recently, the eighth police officer was arrested for stealing money from drug dealers in an ongoing FBI probe of the city’s force. Two are charged with beating an unarmed suicidal man in a city hospital. 

toddrdarling.com

Mitchell Moreno

This is one of the first photographs I took after being gifted a camera. It is August 2017, a week before [the white supremacist rally at] Charlottesville. At the time, my chosen family and I felt that as well as marching against a recently elected Donald Trump, it was important to mock him; to show that our resistance could be playful, and our queer love greater than his despotic hatred. I wouldn’t make this photograph today. In the context of the terrifying and murderous unfolding of his presidency, it would seem flippant. Solidarity recognises the interconnectedness of struggles.

Under 21st century neoliberalism, Niemöller’s First They Came… needs to be mentally expanded to include other identity categories including – among others – people of colour, the poor, LGBTQIA+ folk, migrants, and disabled people. An attack on the rights of one marginalised group is an attack on the rights of all marginalised people. It is only by building resistance across intersectional borders that we can unpick the systems that oppress us, piece by piece. 

mitchellmoreno.com

Lina Geoushy

I grew up playing football at home with my brothers. I didn’t have the option of getting proper training due to the lack of access to football teams for girls at that time. In addition to that, there are stigmas surrounding girls and women playing football. 

This image is from an ongoing project about women’s football in Egypt. In solidarity, these young women are supporting each other and fighting the deeply rooted stigma that football is a male sport. 

linageoushy.com

Dania Hany

It’s easier to conform 

To follow the lines 

The designated paths 

The assigned roles 

It’s hard though 

To stop

Rethink, re-examine 

Everyday life is burdensome

enough but,

A radical act of care

A gentle touch 

A kind gesture  

These things are hard

Ideas are timeless, but our understanding of them isn’t 

So if you’ll move into this world,

move gently

The weight is heavy sometimes

And we’re not all warriors

But we’re all capable of this

A gentle act of presence 

A gentle act of solidarity. 

daniahany.com

Jess Kohl

I made this photograph in Tarlac, in the Philippines, in 2018. I was there working on a project about the DIY punk scene in the country, during the time of President Duterte’s regime. I was interested in seeing if this marginalised group had become targets in his ’war on drugs’. This photo was taken in a member of the scene’s backyard, where he and his family had hosted a small but powerful gig, which drew kids from across the country, many of them hitchhiking to get there. The gig was organised to raise money for Wendy, a young girl who had been part of the scene and had become mentally ill and stopped speaking. No one knew why.

Globally, punks are often viewed with hostility by mainstream society, but the reality is very different. The group I spent time with in the Philippines are some of the most hospitable, caring people I’ve met – they spend their time making sure even the poorest members of their communities don’t go hungry, through initiatives like Food Not Bombs. They are proof that even if you have very little, you can still give a lot. 

jesskohl.com

Lisa Barnard

On 28 October 2011, legal action charities Reprieve and Pakistan’s Foundation for Fundamental Rights (FFR) hosted the Waziristan Grand Jirga (council) in Islamabad in order to open an international dialogue on the CIA’s use of drones in Pakistan. Tribal elders and victims’ families from North Waziristan participated. Residents of Waziristan and the FATA regions of Pakistan strongly disputed the CIA’s claim that no ‘non-militant’ had been killed in drone strikes, noting that fatalities included women and children. The Jirga insisted on a new transparency so that the world may make an informed judgment on the efficacy of the war waged on sovereign territory by the intelligence service of a foreign nation.

Waziri-based photojournalist Noor Behram brought pieces of Hellfire missiles collected by families of the victims of alleged drone strikes to the Jirga. We were there to document the events and to listen to the stories from the families of the victims. The images of the missile fragments were used as evidence. 

On 29 August 2021 – 10 years later – a drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, killed an aid worker and nine members of his family, including seven children. It is clear from this event that by removing soldiers from the ground in Afghanistan there will be a resurgence in remote, non-judicial killings in which many innocent people will be killed. The US military called this a “tragic mistake”, and that those killed were unlikely to be members of the local Islamic State affiliate. They are now considering reparations. 

lisabarnard.co.uk

Antony Cairns

LA-LV210

This is an artwork showing the 2nd  Tunnel in Los Angeles. A famous location in Hollywood and a place I always wanted to photograph after seeing it in Blade Runner (1982), the film that is based on the Philip K dick novel ‘Do Andriods dream of electric sheep’. 

 It is here where the ideology of dystopia lives, within fictional futures telling stories of how society has fragmented and injustice and hardship have taken over. Yet a dystopian landscape usually only exists within the frame of a world which is trying to become utopian, and within this world there will always be elements that act as the antonym of the utopia. 

www.antony-cairns.co.uk

Lottie Davies

What is the future?

I made this photograph in early 2009, when the euphemistically-named ‘credit crunch’ had just begun. There was a feeling of tense resignation in the air – forces beyond our control were about to screw us all over and we weren’t quite sure in what way, or how bad it could be. Financial mismanagement and good old-fashioned greed bore fruit soon after in the global recession which we all remember fondly I’m sure.

That feeling of nebulous powerlessness was behind the making of this image, while it was also directly inspired by the memory of a nightmare, in which a young woman contributed to my Memories and Nightmares series. The crux of her story was that she dreamt her baby son was being suffocated by soot. This deeply upsetting account put me in mind of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which I had recently read, and so the stories become conflated and reimagined in my mind.

The location is a history library, which is not accidental. Will we never learn from what went before, the things that humans have done for generations. I have little faith in humankind to act other than in self-interest on a grand scale, and if we become extinct it will be no sooner than we deserve. But, I think that our generation’s dystopia isn’t going to be some glamorous sci-fi future where rugged survivalists roam a post-apocalyptic wasteland – we will create it without even noticing, and I’m not sure we will recognise it when it’s here. 

www.lottiedavies.com

Thomas Brown

(Pluto) 153.3/90560

Suddenly, although we could or should have seen it coming, we found ourselves in our own dystopia, but it wasn’t like the movies, nothing as clear cut as that.  Switching overnight from confusion to sheltering in place, forced to find sanctuary from real yet intangible threats of disease, unemployment, boredom.  Our normal safe havens and go-to’s all posed a danger, our hubs, friends, families and places of physical community, all unavailable at this current time.

The boundary between humanity and technology took another blurring. My kids began to think their grandparents lived inside the FaceTime screen. Physical locations, and therefore distance, became universal, everyone was equally far away, and on the flip was equally easy to contact, as they were always in.

My device easily allowed me to become an avatar, to navigate and connect with my global community – a community of image makers – to engage where before I was somewhat reclusive.  I have met so many wonderful people this year, they have supported and inspired me, and I’m thankful for that.  It’s easy to be closed and keep one arm over your work for fear of someone stealing your golden idea, but a strong community is good for everyone.

thomasbrown.info

Florence Goupil

Another world was imagined

Where human perception ends, there lives the silence that calls us tirelessly every day. It is said that there was a time when the Light was for everyone. But the restless noise of time extinguished our consciences. The world is over now. We will return to the darkness from where we came.

Photography is a possibility, it is the encounter of the visible and the invisible. The black and white photo is maybe the most intimate expression, which originates in our dreams, in our childhood memories and in the magical stories of the Native Americans that have touched us. Stories that have relieved me from the description we have been given about the world, since we were children.

One time I heard a phrase that changed my approach. “Everything in nature has a spirit”. However, if we are destroying nature, what will remain, I ask myself. Everything we imagine and think comes from destruction. But the end of one world is the beginning of a new one.

This is why photography is for me the possibility of seeing beyond our perception, to approach other worlds.

www.florencegoupil.com

River Claure

The first weeks of the pandemic arrived. The paranoia reached its peak. People in Bolivia found themselves buying masks in unnecessary quantities, causing a shortage in many cities. The consequence? Many started to make their own masks, masks made of plastic bottles, reused objects that became an artifact that would protect them from the virus. Somehow, in these times that we are living, covering our faces is part of daily life. The mask is no longer a ritual or artistic practice.

When going out to the streets, and observing people with their face half covered, I sense how we all were losing part of our personal particularites in the public space. Our capacity of recognising others, and being recognised, was changing. In a dystopian world, where we have to use a mask to protect us from the virus, finding the way to not lose individuality would be an act of salvation.

It is this reflection that leads me to the idea of making our own masks with my family. I am not talking about masks to go out in public, or masks that would protect us from the virus, but masks that would make us ponder on the personal, social and family recognition that we have at this time, ones that protect us from the loss of our individuality.

This is a photograph of my grandma Ema. She says she is a “rabbit mom.” 

riverclaure.com

Max Siedentopf

Hope And Hunger

Power is the ability to move something in a particular way. 

Power is the ability to direct the behaviour of others.

Power is the ability to control. 

Power is the ability to alter the course of events. 

Hope And Hunger investigates this power – the power to move the masses.

Using pigeons as a metaphor for the public, the series shows how people in times of need turn to ideologies to give them hope and still their hunger. However at what point does the hunger outweigh the belief of the ideology they join? 

Throughout the experiment, different ideologies were depicted through their symbols. Here we see bird seed in the shape of the holy cross, the peace sign, a swastika, the Star of David, the star and crescent or hammer and sickle innocently lying on the floor. At first the scenes are quiet and abandoned, however no matter what the symbol represents, one by one we see it attracting more followers. The first followers join because they are hungry, they want to still their hunger. As they join, each new follower attracts twice as many more to the point that we can’t distinguish the symbol anymore, which is now completely buried by the overwhelming masses. 

Did the last ones join because they were hungry or because they followed what the others did? 

Power is the ability to move something in a particular way. 

Power is the ability to direct the behaviour of others.

Power is the ability to control. 

Power is the ability to alter the course of events. 

Maxsiedentopf.com

Hubert Crabieres

I make the majority of my images in the house I share with my friends in Argenteuil, in the Val d’Oise. My work articulates and confronts staged scenes and living spaces, spectacular and intimate. When I create my photographs, whether they are personal initiatives or commissioned, I accumulate many accessories. To illustrate the term power, I wanted to focus on different meanings of the English term, from the most symbolic to the most concrete. I liked the idea of electric power being deployed in the Argenteuil studio, creating a powerful celebration of colours.

Hubertcrabieres.fr

Nonzuzo Gxekwa

Data is Currency 

Your smartphone can record your activities. Big corporations pay top dollar to have access to this information – the power to control and influence consumer decisions and taste. Citizens are under surveillance. 

“He who has data has the power”’ – Tim O’Reilly

@nonzuzogxekwa

Elena Cremona 

“Faking phone calls, crossing the street, changing routes, asking to be accompanied home, ignoring catcalls, avoiding dimly lit areas, covering up…these are all realities that shape how women are forced to police themselves in public spaces, not only in the UK but around the world. Many women asked why the narrative always seemed to focus on how victims should protect themselves better. How are men being held accountable and holding themselves accountable?” – Maela Ohana 

elenacremona.com

Cemre Yesil

I hold her, she carries me. 

How does a person carry the body, the posture? 

It is my mother who carries my body in this photograph. 

How does one carry the body in a photograph through holding and being held by another body 

– the maternal body?

I handle her,

she handles me.

We understand the world only after handling it. This is a process of handling;

handling a future loss.

cemreyesil.com

Al J Thompson

To hold power is to instinctively assume control above any given circumstance. It is a naturally derived component of the ego that we understand is a necessity to human survival. With power comes the responsibility to act upon it without infringement.

The image titled, Looking Up, from my monograph Remnants of an Exodus, references the limitations, hope, and the nuance of the individual. To look up means to invoke power. To invoke power means the acquisition of strength relies on an abstract considered greater-than.

My photographs do not reflect that all is lost. It is a challenge of empowerment. And, I have reasons to believe that fortunes can be turned only if a fragmented community can find ways of kinship. 

aljthompson.com