At its most basic, a photograph is a recording of light at a specific moment in time. Whether light is inscribed onto the surface of a silver-plated copper plate or converted into electrical charges and binary code, it is the moment and duration of the photographic exposure that determines what the photographer captures and what the camera leaves out.

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, a camera can arrest a fraction of a second, preserving a moment that might otherwise be lost forever – a gesture, an expression, an event that will never recur.

A photograph can freeze a moment in time, holding it in the archive, helping it endure despite the passing years.

It can also accumulate time, recording minutes, hours, days and even seasons in a single exposure. engage with time.

Photography can reach beyond human timescales altogether, imaging the slow processes of geological formation, biological growth and ecological change that take place across centuries and millennia.

Photography can record something imperceptible to the human eye, the passage of time.

Whether a photograph provides a portal to another era, stands as a memorial to a lost community, acts as a vessel for the durational or records the instantaneous, to engage with photography is always to engage with time.

Photo Oxford 2027 celebrates photography’s relationship to time as both a mechanical device, an indexical record and a philosophical enquiry.