Out of Sight is a touring exhibition from the Vancouver Art Gallery that features a selection of recently-acquired photographs by Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) and Harold Edgerton (1903-1990), two giants in the history of photography. Both artists are celebrated for their revolutionary works that expand our understanding of time and motion and extend the capacity of human perception by making time stand still.

While time can be measured and evaluated, it also has a profound subjective dimension; how the passage of time is understood and felt is the product of individual experience, making its perception fluid, malleable and subject to interpretation. Both of these artists continually mined this rich terrain—how time can be represented and perceived—by manipulating and distorting the ways in which time functions to challenge our accepted views and preconceived notions. 

The photographs of Muybridge and Edgerton depict slices of time—frozen moments—to approach the problem of representing that which cannot be seen. In their scientific experiments they exploited the promise of the photographic medium to act as a definitive record of an action or event, essentially stopping time to depict the mechanical truth of movement. Brought together, these bodies of work explore ideas about perception and representation, challenging viewers to reconsider what we see in our everyday encounters.

Out of Sight is organized and circulated by the Vancouver Art Gallery with the generous support of the Killy Foundation.