My current show ‘Yurruun.ga wetlands – an album’ with John Laidler, consists of ‘photographs’ that extend for 60 seconds. These are not edits excised from longer takes. Serendipity plays its part.
60 seconds is neat but arbitrary, a number inherited from the Babylonians, who in turn, inherited it from the Sumerians. The earliest films lasted about 60 seconds (Lumière Brothers, L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat, 1895, 50 seconds). When I began the project, we had no knowledge of Tik Tok which originally limited videos to one minute.
A couple of days ago, I thought of taking sequences.
In 1872, Leland Stanford, former governor of California and president of the Central Pacific Railroad, asked Eadweard Muybridge to photograph a horse galloping at full speed. Stanford thought that all of the horse’s feet were off the ground simultaneously at some point. Seven years later Muybridge used a row of twenty-four cameras triggered either at timed intervals or as the horse’s legs tripped a wire. (Yes, they did have all feet of the ground).
A photograph may capture a moment but what of the following moments? What happens. What led up to the caught moment? What is the context.
And there is no flow, just moments that sometimes. ‘Autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life…I am talking of space, of moments and discontinuities.’ Walter Benjamin [i]
In a sequence of three, Elliott Erwitt photographs shows a man seated drinking a beer. His companion lying on the sand sunbathing. The final image shows him lying across her. Mexico, 1973. They tell a story.
Friday, 6 June 2025, I took a series of sequences, about a second apart.
Here are some edited versions
I follow a Darter flying to a fist of rock, I can tell the future.
The bird is engulfed by a surge, bandages unravelling,
gobbets whipped up and the bird vanishes, flooded,
wings are shadowing the foam and then burst free.
Three surfers float in the wait, eyeing the rhythm
of the ocean. One flies, one falters on the spur, missing
the boat, one catches the ride, a drug of momentums
ending in a festive fountain of spay and falling over.
My shoulders are not strong enough to lie on a board and paddle.
My balance is not good enough to stand on a moving wave.
My options for fun are rapidly narrowing. I enjoy writing poetry.
[i] Walter Benjamin from ‘A Berlin Chronicle’ in Selected Writings, vol 2, part 2 trans. E. Jephcott, Harvard UP. 2005, p612
