Temps de pose

In 1827, an image took several days of light. In 1887, one two-thousandth of a second. Sixty years separate those two numbers, and this corpus crosses them in thirteen plates.

This is not an anthology. Each image is here because its duration explains what you see in it. Daguerre's boulevard is empty because ten minutes of exposure erase anyone who walks. Nadar's mannequin is a mannequin because no worker can hold still for a quarter of an hour. Julia Jackson's face trembles because a living face cannot be a statue for five minutes. Lady Ruthven turns her back, and a back holds a pose effortlessly. What is strangest about early photography, its deserted streets, its grave faces, its motionless figures, is not a style. It is duration made visible.

Then Muybridge abolishes the pose, and the corpus should end there. It ends instead with Atget, forty years later, still working with a view camera in a world where no one is obliged to. Duration was a constraint; it becomes a choice. That reversal is what this app stands on.

This screen shows only what your surroundings allow it to show. Two measurements, the light in the room and the tremor of your hand, and nothing else. Exposure accumulates as it does on film: movement does not erase what is already recorded, it lays it down as a trail. Each plate develops at the rate of its historical exposure, compressed but faithful in proportion. Niépce keeps you waiting more than two minutes. Muybridge asks for no waiting at all, and that is the lesson.

No permissions, no account, nothing transmitted, nothing to collect. This is not a wellness app. It is an instrument, and it measures the one thing photography has never stopped measuring.

No permission, no account, no connection, no advertising, no notification, nothing to collect. Temps de pose asks for nothing and transmits nothing: the thirteen photographs live inside the application, and the only two measurements it takes — the light of your room and the trembling of your hand — never leave your phone.

An IMAGE4D application.