In its simplest terms, a photograph is understood to be the relation between exposure and aperture, and this is one of the first things that users learn about the identity of the camera. But what happens when these conventions are mixed? In this study, Petri Anttonen views the basic properties of photography in a completely new light. This book discusses photographs taken with a sliding focal-plane shutter developed by Petri Anttonen. The works were originally shown in three thematic exhibitions in the 1990s, for which Anttonen was awarded the Finnish State Prize for Photography. The Touch of Time is an artistic work, but also an art-oriented study of photography and its underlying theoretical definitions. This book contains imagery based on unanticipatedness, in which temporal events turn the photograph into material permitting new interpretations. Identifying the preconceptions that steer practices of viewing permits the reader to interpret the images in contexts that prove to be surprising.