This book documents the exhibition, chronologically divided in two tranche, which will be held at GAM Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino (1961-1985 from 25 October 2008 to 6 February 2009; 1985-2008 from 6 March to 5 May 2009). The exhibition illustrates the continual emergence of photographic forms in the history of moving images. In the 1960s and 70s, which were characterised by structuralist cinema and conceptual video, still photography represented the ultimate achievement in the analysis of time. In later years, photography became a universal archive of historic time for auteur video and cinema and, by browsing through the shelves of this art form, one is taken on a journey through both past and future. As from the 1980s, the frozen time of photography was a vision in slow motion, indefinably tending towards stasis, and the ethereal substance of memory began to be released into the world of moving images. And it is precisely in the way they reconsider memory that more recent works appear once again to relate to the language of photographs. It is as though they contained the means to record, one step at a time, the irreversible dissipation of meaning and energy that is released over time, within each image, each frame, each screen. The works on show have been selected from the GAM collections, and five of them are taken from the latest 2007-08 acquisitions, which are being shown for the first time in the museum.

Artists: John Baldessari, David Claerbout, Jem Cohen, Guy Debord, Jimmie Durham, Harun Farocki, Hollis Frampton, Cyprien Gaillard, Gilbert & George, Chris Marker, Luigi Ontani, Giulio Paolini, Robin Rhode, Michael Snow, Simon Starling, Bill Viola, T.J. Wilcox