The duration of time - After Bergson, Barthes and Deluze

“…looking at a photograph, I inevitably include in my scrutiny the thought of that instant, however brief, in which a real thing happened to be motionless in front of the eye. I project the present photograph’s immobility upon the past shot, and it is this arrest which constitutes the pose” - Roland Barthes

Expectation of movement

Repetition without difference (The Photograph) not without difference from the “original” object, but without difference from itself a moment ago -Geoffrey Rhodes

Repetition with difference (Cinema) Barthes considers the “distraction” of cinema, the constant flow of images.

The photo has no “durée” (Henri Bergson) but forces the viewer to impart their own “durée” (subjectivity), their own perception. Cinema occupies the mind, does not allow for contemplation, images are forced to be viewed in a sequence, unfolding a narrative.

Relationship to the photo image (per Deluze) is that we view our changing present and an unchanging point in the past.

The spectator is actually stringing together pieces of duration into a whole, a present, a virtual. This launches the viewer into the film: lured in by his own perception, the viewer becomes a denizen of the cinemas durée, forgetting his own.

The photograph forces contemplation with the self (sublime, but an ideal of wanting to submit to the static form of the image (this causes a tension) there is no resolve.

Barthes “Photographs are signs which don’t take, which turn, as milk does. Whatever grants to vision and whatever its manner, a photograph is always invisible: it is not it that we see”

Mnemonics (transference) subjectively and physically, a connection through the impress of light and the impress of subjective thought, the duration of time for the bloom of a burn or light and the creation of a memory, the act of viewing, the bloom of the image awakened in their viewers mind.

Light -> duration -> image creation-> Image viewing -> memory formation -> recognition - > mnemonic referencing

Light -> Impression -> Recognition