Text: Jenny Altschuler

Time is Limited is a group exhibition discussing complex relationships of the human confrontation with the nature of time. The title of the exhibition
suggests a finite period within a lifespan upon which to ponder, question and respond. The photographic artists represented use their medium and the camera’s conducive mechanisms of speed, shutter setting and selectivity of moment, to engage and reconcile with the realizations, theories and personal issues resultant from their contemplations. Jenny Altschuler, a long-standing South African photographic artist and lecturer of the medium, admits her “realization that nothing we see, is forever, not even the photograph that is usually believed to ‘save’ the fleeting moment and memorialize our lives, our peaks”. She explains this as one of the motivations for these works: “I am therefore drawn to using the medium’s mechanisms of time to create the fleeting elements of ephemerality and transitioning. I have also used projection as this is a medium which in itself is ephemeral, non-tangible and transparent.” It is apparent that all the photographers on this show use their medium in various conscious and intuitive ways to deal with their contemplations related to time.
Along one trajectory, and inherent within the interrogation of limited time and the cycle of life are two symbiotic concepts. The first creates a consecutive rhythm of sequences through future, present to past, referring to the limitations of metered quotas of time, (dwindling seconds, minutes, hours and years). This scenario confronts the deteriorating materiality of the flesh and the finite physical end of life. Mortality may or may not be accepted in the natural flow. Cultural anthropologist and interdisciplinary scientific theorist and author, Ernest Becker, referred to human civilization as a coping mechanism motivated by survival instinct against the awareness of mortality, in his 1974 publication, The Denial of Death. Vardi Kahana, an Israeli photographic artist, deals in her studies “Beauty has cut itself off” (1992-1993) with the mortal female ‘veteran of life’, associated endurance of pain and limitations of the flesh, albeit clinically and objectively. Her scientific eye displays both the hint of the classic beauty of the traditional nude juxtaposed with the usually unseen and course reparation of broken flesh. Yet the repulsion is not there, due to the clinical and unemotional manner of the shot frame. The young Israeli photojournalist, Miki Noam-Alon also brings this consciousness of the deterioration of the materiality of the world to our attention through the attention to details of the residue of usage of ‘material things’ and the elements sustaining humanity, such as ‘air’. Picturing the dilapidated residue of living, (the garbage, the wasted boat, and the gasmasks of ordinary urban society) he also refers to the idea of a present where the items were once new and fresh. Only with time they were ‘drained, contaminated, vacated, worn and wasted.
Photographic artist Hanna Sahar and Altschuler never let go of the latter trajectory as a sweet cognizance, but purposefully present a second frame of reference to time: transcendence of the limited moment. The viewer is drawn into to a less material experience. The works often cycle through a number of lifespans, associating ultimately with repetitions of time, family and community histories and perhaps even re-incarnation. In Altschuler’s work the medium of digital layering further provokes ideas of transparency beyond the physical limitation, including the make-up of an embodied spiritual, psychological and emotional consciousness as well as a reference to an unconscious presence, a limitless, infinite soul. Sahar in her series “Ashlon beauty” (2009-2010) and her “Nightwatch” series (2009) does the same using the camera’s ability to blur the moment and transcend the capture of limited concrete materiality. Her women stare out at the viewer, moving ever so slightly with their breath, escaping the clichéd ‘captured moment’ and referring to the symbol of the communal.
One of the traditional roles of the camera has always been to ‘capture’ the fleeting moment. Although psychologically man has an ambivalent relationship with the present, the ability of the camera to archive the lived experience provides an enduring purpose for photographers. Photojournalists and documentarians, who tell the narratives of history, aim for the captured reality of facts and proof. Meirav Heiman plays with this idea but takes it even farther, constructing the captured split second or ‘critical moment’ which defies the eye. The irony of this ‘spit second’ freeze of time, is surprisingly revealing of human nature and its blemishes yet comedian and light hearted at the same time. Mundane happenings and objects in motion stop the natural flow of consecutive time, disturbing our clichéd, sleepy understanding of time and humorously, yet seriously bringing the photographically conscious defining moment back into discussion.
All the artists represented in this show use the various mechanisms, associations and techniques inherent the photographic medium in a highly considered and contemplative manner, making the viewing of this showcase a must for photographers, curators and collectors, who appreciate the partnership of the conceptual and practical practices within the current global art related photographic arena.