Time Management Techniques

Sept 24, 2022–Jan 8, 2023

A slightly warped black and white image of a busy street with people walking along the sidewalk and cars in the intersection.
A slightly warped black and white image of a busy street with people walking along the sidewalk and cars in the intersection.

Darrel Ellis, Untitled (Street Scene), 1987. Gelatin silver print: sheet, 11 × 14 in. (27.9 × 35.6 cm); image, 9 1/2 × 12 1/4 in. (24.1 × 31.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. in memory of Jon D. Smith Jr. © Estate of Darrel Ellis

Time Management Techniques showcases photography by artists who examined the medium’s relationship to time between 1968 and 2019. Drawn from the Whitney’s permanent collection, the exhibition features many recent acquisitions alongside works that have never before been exhibited. Each of the artists, despite employing vastly different techniques, aesthetics, and conceptual frameworks, works against the immediacy often associated with photography to reflect a passage of time that is slowed down, expanded, or nonlinear.

Some artists employ a personal archive, reaching back into their individual and familial histories to challenge the linear way stories are often told. Others use photography for its self-referential properties, recording the duration and labor of making photographs and allowing the process to dictate the final form. Still others consider performance and photography together, using the camera to mark a moment and suggest countless more that remain uncaptured. By making works that reflect on varieties of duration, all of these artists reveal the slipperiness of time and articulate the artificial ways we attempt to divide, mark, and come to terms with its passing.

This exhibition is organized by Elisabeth Sherman, Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Back

1 / 9

Previous Next

Shannon Ebner & David Reinfurt

1

For this collaborative work with the graphic designer David Reinfurt, Shannon Ebner used photographs from her ongoing series started in 2013, Black Box Collision A, in which she took photographs of the letter A that she found in various public spaces. She and Reinfurt printed twelve of these images on posters and wheat-pasted them around Chelsea and the Meatpacking District, installing each one on the first day of the month for a year. The posters remained in place for up to a week before being removed or destroyed by the weather, people, or other forces of urban life. Timothy Schenck, the Highline’s photographer, then documented the worn posters on site and Ebner and Reinfurt made them into the new posters displayed here. 

  • A black and white print of textured materials and refracted light.
    A black and white print of textured materials and refracted light.

    Shannon Ebner with David Reinfurt, A Hudson Yard: April, 2015, 2014–15, from the series A HUDSON YARD. Inkjet print, 70 3/8 × 47 in. (178.8 × 119.4 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of the artists 2019.16.12. Photograph by Timothy Schenck. Commissioned and produced by High Line Art. Presented by Friends of the High Line and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation

Artists

Essay

Still life photograph of various foods—including empty pistachio shells, root vegetables, bread loaves, and mushrooms—atop a gingham blanket.

Timeless Form

By Elisabeth Sherman, Assistant Curator

Read essay

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection

View 115 works

On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Maya Man, A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City

Learn more about this project

Learn more at whitney.org/artport

On the Hour projects can contain motion and sound. To respect your accessibility settings autoplay is disabled.