Norton Photography Gallery
Postponed. Date TBC.
Photography is uniquely suited to documenting change that happens over such a long period of time it barely registers in the mind. Many photographers have exploited this photographic quality by returning to the same subject – either a person, an exact view, or a general place – to capture change that has elapsed over months, years, or decades. By juxtaposing their photographs, the elapsed time collapses, and the change that has taken place becomes evident. Collapsing Time seeks to offer engaging visual experiences enriched by a variety of approaches photographers have brought to the project of documenting change.
Drawn primarily from the collection of the Center for Creative Photography, the exhibition shows the work of five twentieth-century American photographers: Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan, Frank Gohlke, Andrew Phelps, and Milton Rogovin. In some cases, such as Milton Rogovin’s study of individual people and their families, we see dramatic transformations in the subjects over time. In others cases, such as Ansel Adams’s meditative studies of Yosemite Valley in different weather and lighting conditions, temporal change seems superficial compared with the permanence and constancy of the geological monuments.
The work of Harry Callahan, in which the photographer repeatedly uses his wife, Eleanor, and his daughter, Barbara, as subjects, shows a change both subtle and incidental, as it is the relationship of figure to field that was Callahan’s focus.
Frank Gohlke’s projects draw us into a consideration of regeneration: how does nature, in the case of Mount Saint Helens, or a community, in the case of Wichita Falls, rebuild after massive destruction?
Photographs by Andrew Phelps present an even more open-ended reflection, as they document the agricultural township of Higley, outside of Phoenix, Arizona, as housing developments replace it.
This exhibition is organized by the Center for Creative Photography and Phoenix Art Museum
Left: Ansel Adams, Valley View, Summer, Yosemite National Park, ca. 1935, 77.65.12 ©Trustees of The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona. Right: Ansel Adams, Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, California, ca. 1940, 76.577.35 ©Trustees of The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona