The Memory of Time

In the decades since 1990 the concepts of time and memory have made a strong return in the work of many photographers who seek not simply to reflect the world, but to illuminate how photography constructs our understanding of it. The Memory of Time explores the work of twenty-six contemporary artists from across the world - Sophie Calle, Moyra Davey, Idris Khan, Sally Mann, Susan Meiselas, Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Carrie Mae Weems among them - who investigate the richness and complexity of photography's relationship to time, memory and history. Unlike many mediums, photography possesses the remarkable ability to represent the past in the present, yet its relationship to the past is by no means straightforward. Many photographs seem to depict a singular moment in time, when in reality each image contains multiple layers: the instant of exposure, the moment of viewing and the lapse in between. From a shared fascination with photography's past to an engagement with the literal passage of time and the fleeting evidence of cultural change, these seventy-six works examine how photographs not only evoke our time and place but also create powerful visual histories of our relationship with the land, ourselves and each other.