The 2022 Brock University exhibition Give Us a Moment brought analogue, digital and experimental photography together around memory and the passage of time.
Presented by the Department of Visual Arts, the exhibition included work by students and alumni at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts.
Unpredictable processes carrying the past
Laurie Morrison used analogue methods whose slow and unstable results became part of the work. Chemical reactions, timing and material variation prevented complete control and allowed the process to register chance.
Her images considered how the past shaped the present moment.
Alumna Julie Luth interpreted the title in two ways. Asking an audience to “give us a moment” referred both to the time spent looking at art and to forgotten memories seeking renewed attention.
The time required to make and view a photograph
Emily MacDonald combined analogue and digital methods in work concerned with significant places, memory and duration.
She contrasted the speed and repetition of digital photography with the deliberation required by film. A limited number of exposures encouraged her to study the subject through the viewfinder before releasing the shutter.
The exhibition therefore treated time as both content and material. It appeared in the memories held by the images, the chemical or digital processes used to make them and the attention requested from the viewer.
Give Us a Moment challenged the idea that photography captures an instant without duration. Every image in the exhibition carried the time of preparation, exposure, development, recollection and later public encounter.