50 for 50: Keith Kozloff

There are some landscapes in which it is impossible for the traveler to ignore great gulfs of time. Unlike in the U.S., built structures in Ireland are often left alone or added to, rather than replaced. It helps that many are made of stone. For the last five thousand years, stone structures—dolmens, ring forts, castles, abbeys, churches, cemeteries—persist as accumulated visual layers of the island’s long history. Some dry-stone walls dividing fields are contemporary; others that look similar are ancient. A graveyard might have occupants buried next to each other but interred hundred years apart. Keith Kozloff’s objective with this photo series is to visually suggest layers of the landscape’s history. The typical act of photographing freezes a single moment in time through the click of the camera’s shutter, but for these works he uses multiple exposure photography to disturb and compress time’s arrow. While in the field, he recorded as many as nine views of the same subject, which his camera cumulatively combined into a single image. The resulting semi-abstract compositions can be initially disorienting. The apparent solidity of the landscape becomes attenuated. Viewers are invited to relax their preconceptions of photography as a medium that offers clarity in time and space. 50 for 50 is an artist opportunity that invites 50 community artists to showcase their work at Touchstone throughout 2026, the year of Touchstone’s 50th anniversary.