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We see in the photograph the past as passing away, we see time’s movement. The photograph ceases to be an image that freezes time. True, it is a still image like paintings, but in contrast to them it does not show us a frozen and a-temporal image.

The photograph shows us temporality: the fleeting, ever changing, forever escaping moment, it is not “outside” time, but rather it carries time in it, or cuts time’s linearity. The photograph shows us the ephemeral nature of things, a nature that we tend to forget, or suppress (in handling things as though they will be there, always accessible).

If we describe what we see in the photograph solely through the language of state of affairs “it was Tuesday afternoon, she wore red” we lose sight of the particularity, we affix what we see and restrict it to the domain of the past. And the photograph, although showing us the past, really reveals the present as retention of the past, and the present as already past.

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