A Brief History of the "1 Image 1 Minute" Project

This project is a contemporary recreation of Une Image Pour Une Minute, a project originally produced by French director Agnes Varda for presentation on French television in 1983. In Varda's version, a photographic image appeared on television (in-between network programming), and someone--a curator, photographer, or art historian--would speak about the image for one minute.


Here I have asked contemporary photographers, artists, historians, and others to select an image that has significance for them, and write or speak about it for the equivalent of 1 minute. The result is a a compelling and accessible means of gaining insight into other artists’ and photographers’ perspectives. The project is also a way of reactivating photo history, cultural literacy, and of offering a closer look at images than the mere fraction of a second that most contemporary images are afforded.

Danny First



Danny First
Contemporary Art Collector

Michal Chelbin, Magamed Russia, 2007. chromogenic print; 37 x 37 in.


Chelbin took this portrait in 2007, while shooting in a wrestling club in The Ukraine. The young wrestler has just finished a hard training session. He is not looking at the camera but his gaze seems to be so focused that he appears to be in a state of hypnosis. He looks alert, ready to act, yet almost unaware of the camera. It is a moment of surrender. Like many of Chelbin’s photographs, it carries a strange, enigmatic feeling and conveys seemingly contradictory characteristics, such as youth and manhood, strength and weakness, masculinity and femininity, and tenderness and brutality.

This portrait is included in Chelbin’s monograph The Black Eye, which was published in the fall of 2009 by Twin Palms Publishers.

X-Tra Volume 12 No. 3, Spring 2010

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Micol Hebron