A photograph is a recording of light at a specific moment in time. Whether this light is inscribed onto the surface of a copper plate or converted into binary code, it is the moment and duration of the photographic exposure that makes the photograph. It determines what is captured and what is lost forever.

But photography’s relationship to time is not limited to its technical processes; it extends to the philosophy of the medium. With the shutter’s decisive act, the photographer can preserve moments that might otherwise be lost forever – fleeting gestures, expressions and events.

They can arrest a fraction of a second, freezing a moment in time so it can endure. The photographer can also accumulate time, recording minutes, hours, days and even seasons in a single exposure. They can reach beyond human timescales altogether, imaging the slow processes of geological formation and ecological change. Photography can record something imperceptible to the human eye: the passage of time.

To engage with photography is always to engage with time. Photographs can provide portals to different eras, memorialise lost communities, record the instantaneous and act as vessels for the durational.

Photo Oxford 2027 is a celebration of the role time plays in photographic practice and its complex relationship to the medium.