Ecstatic Time: The Alchemy of Photography

The Phoenix Art Museum photography exhibition Ecstatic Time: The Alchemy of Photography opens on July 29, 2026, in Phoenix, Arizona. Organized in partnership with the University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography (CCP), the exhibition brings together nearly 100 works that examine how photography shapes perception, alters reality, and expands human understanding of time.

On view through January 3, 2027, Ecstatic Time spans nearly the entire history of photography. From early experimental processes to contemporary conceptual works, the exhibition positions photography not only as a documentary medium, but as a creative force capable of transformation, imagination, and visual invention.

Photography, Reality, and the Concept of 'Ecstatic Time'
While photography is often understood as a tool for capturing reality, Ecstatic Time reframes the medium as something far more fluid and interpretive. The exhibition emphasizes photography’s ability to distort, heighten, and reconfigure what we see.

The title comes from film theorist Hollis Frampton, who described photographs as offering access to “ecstatic time”—a state outside of ordinary chronological experience. Derived from the Greek word ékstasis, meaning “to stand outside oneself,” the concept reflects how photographs can suspend moments, separating them from the continuous flow of lived time.

In this sense, photography becomes not just a record of what has been, but a way of entering new perceptual and temporal dimensions.

New Couple Who Closed Their Eyes, Tokyo, 1974. Gelatin silver print. Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: Purchase, with matching funds from Hitachi America, Ltd., 90.11.2.© Kikuji Kawada

Celebrating a 20-Year Institutional Partnership
The exhibition also marks the 20th anniversary of the partnership between Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography. Established through the support of Mr. and Mrs. John R. Norton, the collaboration has made it possible to bring significant works from CCP’s world-renowned collection to broader audiences in Phoenix, Arizona.

“Phoenix Art Museum is proud to present Ecstatic Time in partnership with the Center for Creative Photography as we celebrate two decades of collaboration,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, Sybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum and coordinating curator of the exhibition’s presentation. “This enduring collaboration has allowed our institutions to share extraordinary works while advancing a deeper understanding of photography as an evolving and transformative medium.”

Untitled, 1975. Gelatin silver print. Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: Gift of the artist, 2004.19.3 © Mark Cohen

A Landmark Photography Exhibition in Phoenix, Arizona
Featuring approximately 100 works drawn from CCP’s collection, Ecstatic Time includes both iconic and lesser-known photographs by major figures such as Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. Alongside these canonical works are experimental and conceptual images that highlight photography’s technical innovation and artistic range.

Spanning the 19th century through the present, the exhibition places particular emphasis on early 20th-century photography, including developments in flash photography, still life, time-lapse imagery, and astronomical imaging. Many of these works capture phenomena invisible to the naked eye, expanding the boundaries of what photography can reveal.

Collectively, the exhibition evokes a sense of a visual cabinet of curiosities, where scientific inquiry and artistic experimentation meet.

Harold Edgerton, Bullet through Banana, 1964. Dye transfer print. Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: Gift of The Harold and Esther Edgerton Family Foundation, 96.71.5. © Harold Edgerton, MIT, courtesy of Palm Press Inc.

Four Thematic Sections of Ecstatic Time: The Alchemy of Photography
Ecstatic Time is organized into four thematic sections, each exploring a different dimension of photography’s relationship to time, perception, and reality.

Awake and Dreaming: Surreal Photography and Camera Vision

The first section, Awake and Dreaming, brings together surreal and enigmatic 20th-century photographs that highlight the transformative power of camera vision. It emphasizes how photographic techniques—particularly flash—can freeze time, disrupt perception, and reveal unexpected moments.

Artists featured in this section include Ilse Bing, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Kozo Miyoshi, and Garry Winogrand. Their works range from dreamlike compositions to candid street photography, all of which challenge conventional ways of seeing.

The Thing Itself: Still Life and the Cabinet of Curiosities

The Thing Itself presents a dense, immersive installation of still life photography that foregrounds the physical presence of objects. The section draws inspiration from the idea of a cabinet of curiosities, where disparate objects are collected to provoke wonder and inquiry.

Featured photographers include Harold Edgerton, Edward Weston, Masahisa Fukase, and Abelardo Morell. Together, their works elevate everyday subjects into carefully constructed visual studies that emphasize form, texture, and material presence.

Out of this World: Astronomy and the Expanding Universe of Photography

The third section, Out of this World, explores astronomical and space-based photography. This includes images of solar eclipses, such as a photograph by Ansel Adams, as well as imagery captured by NASA’s Mars Pathfinder rover.

These works demonstrate how photography extends human perception beyond Earth, capturing phenomena that are distant, cosmic, or otherwise invisible. In doing so, they expand the scale of photography from the intimate to the astronomical.

Incisions in History / Segments of Eternity: Photography and Time

The final section, Incisions in History / Segments of Eternity, examines photography’s complex relationship to time. It brings together conceptual works by artists such as Hiroshi Sugimoto and Lew Thomas, who explore how photography can compress, stretch, or disrupt temporal experience.

This section also includes 19th-century photographs that reflect earlier historical moments, creating a dialogue between past and present. Together, these works highlight photography’s ability to hold multiple temporalities within a single frame.

Edward Henry Weston, MGM Studios, 1939. Gelatin silver print. Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: Edward Weston Archive, 81.251.128. © Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents

Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and the Evolution of Photographic Practice
Across all four sections, Ecstatic Time features works by some of the most influential figures in photography, including Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. Their images sit alongside experimental and conceptual works that challenge traditional definitions of the medium.

This combination underscores photography’s evolution—from technical documentation to a fully expressive and experimental art form capable of shaping how we understand reality itself.

Why Ecstatic Time Is a Must-See Photography Exhibition

As one of the most significant Phoenix Art Museum photography exhibitions of 2026, Ecstatic Time: The Alchemy of Photography offers a sweeping look at how photography continues to evolve as an artistic and conceptual practice.

By bringing together historical works, experimental processes, and contemporary interpretations, the exhibition invites viewers to reconsider photography not as a mirror of reality, but as a dynamic medium that transforms how we see, think, and experience time itself.

Martin Parr: The Last Resort: 40 Years On

By Martin Parr

Publisher : Dewi Lewis Publishing & Martin Parr Foundation

2026 | 60 pages

"The pictures from The Last Resort still hold up brilliantly. If I ever reach the Pearly Gates, those are the ones I’d probably pull out first!" – Martin Parr

Published in collaboration with the Martin Parr Foundation, this special edition accompanies a tribute exhibition at the Foundation’s Bristol gallery, honouring Martin Parr following his passing in December. Shot in and around the English seaside town of New Brighton between 1983 and 1985, The Last Resort remains a landmark in British colour documentary photography, establishing Parr as one of the nation’s most influential photographers.

This volume presents a carefully curated selection of images from the iconic series, alongside extensive archival material, including contact sheets, photographs, and ephemera drawn from Martin’s personal collection. Isaac Blease, Archivist at the Foundation, provides insight into the project’s origins, exploring the artistic and cultural influences that prompted Parr’s shift from black-and-white to colour photography, as well as the series’ initial exhibitions in Liverpool and at London’s Serpentine Gallery.

Peter Brawne, designer of the original 1986 book, reflects on the creative process behind the design and his collaboration with Martin, while Susie Parr, Martin’s wife, contributes a personal account of New Brighton and the first public presentation of the work at Liverpool’s Open Eye Gallery in 1985.

Richly illustrated and thoughtfully contextualized, this book offers both longtime admirers and new readers a unique glimpse into the development of Martin Parr’s iconic vision and the vibrant world of British seaside life that inspired it.

All About Martin Parr

Nathalie Rubens: Seasons of Time

By Nathalie Rubens

Publisher : Kehrer Verlag

2026 | 112 pages

Nathalie Rubens: Seasons of Time marks a thoughtful and intimate debut, tracing the subtle thresholds that define a woman’s life. In this carefully composed photobook, Nathalie Rubens reflects on two parallel passages: her daughter Ruby’s emergence into young adulthood and her own transition into post-menopausal life. Through this mirrored gaze, the work becomes a meditation on continuity and change, revealing how beginnings and endings often unfold side by side.

Rubens turns the camera inward and outward with equal tenderness. Portraits of Ruby capture the fragile confidence and uncertainty of youth—moments poised between dependence and independence. In contrast, self-portraits confront the physical and emotional transformations of midlife with quiet candor. The images resist sentimentality; instead, they dwell in nuance, acknowledging vulnerability while affirming resilience. The body, in its evolving forms, becomes both subject and witness to time’s passage.

Domestic interiors, shared gestures, and fleeting glances anchor the book in lived experience. Light filters through windows, falls across skin, and settles on everyday objects, creating a rhythm that echoes the seasons invoked in the title. Rubens approaches aging not as decline, but as a shifting landscape—one marked by introspection, memory, and renewed self-awareness. The dialogue between mother and daughter unfolds without hierarchy, suggesting that each stage of life carries its own clarity and its own mystery.

Deeply personal yet widely relatable, Seasons of Time speaks to the universality of transition. It honors the complexity of female identity as something neither fixed nor singular, but constantly in motion. Through measured composition and emotional honesty, Rubens crafts a visual reflection on growth, separation, and connection. The result is a quiet affirmation that time, though relentless, can also be a source of understanding and grace, binding generations even as it gently transforms them.

Jon McCormack: Patterns: Art of the Natural World

By Jon McCormack

Publisher : Damiani

2026 | 168 pages

The structural organization of the biosphere is the primary subject of Patterns: Art of the Natural World, a comprehensive visual catalog by Australian photographer and conservationist Jon McCormack. The work operates on the premise that life and geology are governed by a shared geometry, manifested in the recurring arrangements found within botanical specimens, animal migration routes, and topographical transformations. McCormack utilizes high-resolution digital sensors to isolate these rhythms, presenting a data-rich look at the physical world that spans from the macro-scale of elephant trails in the Kenyan savanna to the micro-textures of fossilized feathers. This survey functions as an empirical record of the planet’s innate design, emphasizing the mathematical consistency of natural forms across disparate ecosystems.

The geographical scope of the project encompasses a wide range of extreme environments, including the volcanic coastlines of Iceland and the sub-zero fjords of Antarctica. McCormack documents the silent, systemic logic of the earth, such as the intricate symmetry found within the ice caves of Svalbard and the rhythmic branching of tree rings. A significant portion of the archive focuses on the photographer’s local environment in California, where the interplay of desert erosion and coastal tides provides a laboratory for studying the evolution of landforms. By removing the distraction of color in certain instances or utilizing flat lighting, the imagery highlights the "technofossils" of the natural world—the enduring structures that define the history of a landscape and its inhabitants.

Supplementing the visual evidence are a series of short essays penned by a multidisciplinary group of scientists and explorers. These texts provide a theoretical framework for the photographs, explaining the biological and physical forces that generate specific patterns, such as the fractals in river deltas or the hexagonal tiling of basalt columns. This collaboration ensures that the book remains a rigorous journalistic inquiry into the interconnectedness of life rather than a purely aesthetic exercise. As ecosystems face unprecedented pressure from climate instability, Patterns stands as a definitive document of the planet’s foundational architecture, recording the complex symmetries that underpin global biodiversity before they are irrevocably altered by human intervention.

Albert Watson: Kaos

By Albert Watson

Publisher : Taschen

2026 | 408 pages

Albert Watson: Kaos is a masterful survey of one of photography’s most influential voices, spanning five decades of work that oscillates between intimacy and spectacle. Watson’s photographs are at once meticulously composed and viscerally immediate, capturing both the iconic and the unexpected with equal authority.

KAOS charts Watson’s journey from his breakthrough Alfred Hitchcock portrait in 1973 to the present, revealing the astonishing range of his vision. Across its pages, readers encounter a kaleidoscope of subjects: celebrities in revealing vulnerability, strangers in fleeting urban moments, wildlife in arresting stillness, and landscapes that shimmer with elemental power. Each frame is a study in light, shadow, and narrative tension, embodying Watson’s extraordinary ability to render the familiar as extraordinary.

The book moves fluidly between worlds. Supermodels and pop icons—David Bowie, Kate Moss, Jay Z, Jennifer Lopez, Mick Jagger—sit alongside anonymous figures in neon-lit cities and remote Scottish landscapes, their presence amplified by Watson’s uncanny sense of timing and composition. From sensuous nudes to stark urban street photography, his work explores surface beauty while hinting at the emotional and psychological depth beneath. Watson’s camera captures not only what is seen, but the subtle textures of human experience: desire, humor, solitude, and magnetism.

Accompanied by an essay from Philippe Garner and enriched with Watson’s own reflections, as well as previously unpublished Polaroids from his personal archive, KAOS is both an authoritative career retrospective and a deeply personal document. The photographs pulse with cinematic allure, formal precision, and the irrepressible vitality of a life spent observing the world in its most dynamic and intimate moments.

Presented in a sumptuous hardcover, with optional signed Art Editions including exclusive prints, Albert Watson: Kaos is a definitive celebration of an artist whose work continues to inspire photographers, collectors, and enthusiasts around the globe, capturing a universe simultaneously chaotic, poetic, and utterly compelling.

Ecstatic Time: The Alchemy of Photography

More information about the exhibition

Selected Books