"This Moment is Gone" (逝去的时光) (2014)

by island6

MEDIA: RGB LED display, acrylic painting, paper collage, teakwood frame EDITION:Unique DATE:Made in island6, Shanghai 2014 SIZE: 48(W)×67(H)×5(D) cm | 19(W)×26.4(H)×2(D) inches

Full Description

Humans are perpetually attempting to control time. We are obsessed with it. The progression, the loss, the usage – we will never escape the judgmental eye of time. Photography often seems to provide people with a sense of satisfaction, in that it is through this medium that they can conquer the unconquerable. Here is some time, neatly bottled and retouched, lovingly born out of silver halides and the whir of a shutter. Who knows what we are truly creating each time we lift our cameras to stop the march of time. What have we caught? French philosopher, Henri Bergson, in his theory of Duration, contended that time would always elude science. Once you attempt to measure a moment, the moment is no longer a moment; it is gone, it is past. Bergson noted that once you are even conscious that moment is happening and is perhaps worth capturing, it is already a memory. Does this make photography simply a pathetic reminder of the human desire to control time? Perhaps the photographs on the walls of family living rooms provoke a deep-seated anxiety that is quickly beaten back by the insistence that happiness was successfully captured and reproduced. “You will never be here again,” taunts the photograph of children building sandcastles, “This wasn’t even you then.” [Kathleen McCampbell]

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