Lynn Silverman: In A Matter of Time
On View at Goya Contemporary Gallery, Baltimore, MD
September 1 – October 16, 2025
Reception: September 10, from 6 – 8 pm
Baltimore, MD — Goya Contemporary Gallery is pleased to present In A Matter of Time, the third solo exhibition by internationally acclaimed photographer Lynn Silverman. This compelling body of work invites viewers to contemplate the intersection of memory, time, and photographic materiality through Silverman’s evocative engagement with vintage panoramic photographs.
Silverman’s recent work draws upon scroll-like photographs discovered while sorting through decades of materials within various archives. These images—group portraits of early 20th-century schoolchildren, summer campers, banquet attendees, and military recruits—were originally captured with large-format panoramic cameras. Recovered from obsolescence, they serve both as subject and object in Silverman’s conceptual, transformative investigations.
“Given the relationship a photograph inevitably has with the past, my desire is to focus on the act of remembering. The contortions of the scrolls—the twisting, curling, and blurring during exposure—mirror the fragility of memory,” explains Silverman. “My manipulation of the scrolls attempts to evoke how the gap between the photograph and memory continues to widen as the time when the picture was taken recedes further into the past. This is also true for the near-obsolete technology used to make these panoramas.”
In the studio, Silverman unfurls, rotates, and re-illuminates the photographic scrolls, sometimes exposing both recto and verso, thereby revealing handwritten inscriptions or signatures otherwise hidden from view. In select works, she introduces motion during exposure, allowing gesture and time to permeate the photographic process.
“These strategies simultaneously collapse and expand sequential registers, blurring the line between image, object, and remembrance” notes Amy Raehse, Director and Curator of Goya Contemporary. “Through Silverman’s deliberate and nuanced handling, the curled edges, folds, and shadows of the photographic scrolls assume sculptural and temporal qualities, which she then re-interprets through the lens of her own camera and darkroom-based studio photography” she continued. “The resulting images are at once meditative and disorienting—echoing the ephemeral nature of both memory and analog photography.”
In A Matter of Time continues Lynn Silverman’s decades-long exploration of perception, impermanence, and the phenomenology of seeing, reinforcing her position as a significant voice in contemporary photographic practice.
Silverman’s work has been exhibited internationally and is included in major museum and private collections. In 2025, Silverman was awarded a New York Public Library Picture Collection Fellowship through the Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs. This prestigious fellowship supports artists and scholars in the research, development, and/or execution of new creative or scholarly work based on the Collection’s holdings.
In conjunction with Silverman’s exhibition, the artist and Goya Contemporary Gallery have partnered with Liz Faust at The Silber Art Gallery, Goucher College, to present a special screening of Silverman’s collaborative single-channel video, Between Death and. A separate press release will provide additional details about this unique cooperative screening.
About the Artist:
Lynn Silverman (American, b. 1952) is a distinguished, Baltimore-based photographer whose work examines themes of domestic space, perception, and the passage of time. Her practice often intersects analog processes with conceptual frameworks, drawing connections between image-making and lived experience. Born in Syracuse, New York, Silverman, graduated from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn before emigrating to Sydney, Australia, where she taught for 6 years. Following a brief period back in the United States, Silverman emigrated to Britain where she was awarded a Master of Arts from Goldsmith’s College in London. Silverman eventually returned to the United States where she became a long-standing Professor of Photography at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, and where she is now Professor Emeritus. Silverman’s career is marked by myriad important solo and group exhibitions worldwide, and her work is the subject of many books, catalogues, scholarly journals, and even a poetry collaboration. In 2010, Silverman was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to the Czech Republic. From 2019-2021, Silverman collaborated with eminent sound and time-based media artist, Jason Sloan, to produce the masterfully scored, haunting experimental film Memory Foam, which premiered at Goya Contemporary in 2022 before traveling to New York. Silverman’s work is held in many private and public collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Australian National Gallery, Canberra; Department of Education and Science, London; Exelon Corporation; Fidelity Investments; Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Middlesbrough Art Gallery, Middlesbrough; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; among others.
Goya Contemporary Gallery promotes the art and culture of our time by showcasing the work of mid-career and established artists whose practices have made significant contributions to contemporary visual discourse. Goya Contemporary is a proud member of the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) and the International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA).
For press inquiries please contact Amy Raehse: P: 410-366-2001 / amy@goyacontemporary.com
Goya Contemporary is free and open to the public
Hours of operation: Tue – Fri, 10am – 6pm / Saturday, noon-4pm & by appointment