Dusk

Description

To create this diptych, Eve Sonneman paired two images, taken moments apart, of tourists on an observation deck. Their shadows, as well as the photographer’s, loom large and draw attention to the darkening of the sky in the moment between the frames. By displaying images shot in rapid succession, Sonneman challenged the notion of the “decisive moment,” a reigning idea in mid-century pho-tography according to which the best picture is the one that entirely sums up a scene in a single instant. Instead, Sonneman suggests that photography can reveal time to be arbitrary and mutable, never fully frozen by the camera.

Dusk

Eve Sonneman

1976

Accession Number

58388

Medium

Silver-dye bleach prints (2)

Dimensions

Each image: 15.4 × 23.5 cm (6 1/8 × 9 5/16 in.); Paper: 20.1 × 25.1 cm (7 15/16 × 9 15/16 in.)

Classification

silver-dye bleach print

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Purchased with funds provided by the Society for Contemporary Art