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.

David di Michelle


David di Michelle

"His Twine at First Papers of Surrealism, South View" 1942, photograph by John Schiff of installation by Marcel Duchamp. Photograph owned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art


I chose this image because of my interest in photography that documents installation art. Predominately ephemeral, installation art Is known mainly through photographs like this one. They have become so familiar to us that they cause us to believe we know the art, but what we know is the photograph of the art. Viewing an installation and viewing a photographic documentation of an installation are two different things. Once seen, the physical experience of an installation lingers as a memory. Viewing a photograph of an installation one has not seen elicts a longing to have experienced the actual work. It is charged with our fantasies, expectations and imaginations.

This photograph documents a remarkable work of art. Created in 1942, it is a precursor to one of the most important forms in contemporary art. Today, its inventiveness, originality and radicality seem nothing short of astonishing.
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Micol Hebron