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The Memory of Time: Contemporary Photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Acquired with the Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund

May 3 – September 13, 2015
West Building, Ground Floor, Inner Tier Galleries

Idris Khan, Houses of Parliament, London, 2012, digital silver bromide print, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund, 2012.30.1, © Idris Khan

This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.

Overview: The Memory of Time presents work by contemporary artists who investigate the richness and complexity of photography’s relationship to time, memory, and history. In the last two decades, as the world has undergone an unprecedented technological revolution, photography itself has changed profoundly. With the advent of the digital age, people around the world are recording every aspect of their lives through photography, sharing their pictures with friends and strangers online and through the burgeoning social media. Yet digital photography has not only changed the way people make and circulate photographs, it has also shattered enduring notions of the medium as a faithful witness and recorder of unbiased truths, for now everything in a photograph can be fabricated; nothing need be real. Photography — once understood as verifying specific facts, capturing singular moments of time, and preserving explicit memories — is now recognized to have a multifaceted and slippery relationship to the truth and to the past. By embracing this complexity, contemporary artists have placed photography at the center of a renewed discussion around the construction of history and memory and the perception of time.

The exhibition is divided into five sections: “Traces of History,” “Time Exposed,” “Memory and the Archive,” “Framing Time and Place,” and “Contemporary Ruins.” It features recently acquired works made from the early 1990s to the present by artists who explore these concepts.

Attendance: 120,667

Catalog: The Memory of Time: Contemporary Photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Acquired with the Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund. By Sarah Greenough et al. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2015.

Carrie Mae Weems | nga
Video, Released: July 16, 2019, (15:42 minutes)
Deborah Luster | nga
Video, Released: November 27, 2018, (10:32 minutes)
Binh Danh | nga
Video, Released: September 18, 2018, (9:12 minutes)
David Maisel | nga
Video, Released: May 9, 2017, (6:37 minutes)
Vera Lutter | nga
Video, Released: December 20, 2016, (7:55 minutes)
Susan Meiselas | nga
Video, Released: September 7, 2016, (8:27 minutes)
Mark Ruwedel | nga
Video, Released: May 17, 2016, (8:45 minutes)
"Molotov Man" in Context
Video, Released: May 17, 2016, (28:26 minutes)
Archive of Lamentations
Video, Released: September 22, 2015, (45:02 minutes)
Archive of Lamentations
Audio, Released: September 22, 2015, (45:02 minutes)
Reading from “Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs” by Sally Mann
Video, Released: August 11, 2015, (55:51 minutes)
Conversations with Artists: Vera Lutter
Video, Released: June 30, 2015, (63:35 minutes)
Reading from “Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs” by Sally Mann
Audio, Released: June 30, 2015, (71:30 minutes)
Conversations with Artists: Mark Ruwedel
Audio, Released: June 23, 2015, (60:48 minutes)
Conversations with Artists: Vera Lutter
Audio, Released: May 26, 2015, (63:52 minutes)
Building a Collection: Photography at the National Gallery of Art
Audio, Released: May 12, 2015, (44:01 minutes)
The Memory of Time: Contemporary Photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Acquired with the Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund
Video, Released: May 3, 2015, (7:04 minutes)