“NOBORIGAMA KILN FIRING”: Of this panoramic work, Ricardo Barros said, “I photographed these artisans stoking their wood-fired kiln over two days. They were not all present at once. It rained in part of the picture, night fell, and the intensity of their focus was palpable throughout.” Barros’ 360-degree panoramas are featured in “An Entanglement of Time and Space,” on view at the Friend Center for Engineering Education at Princeton University through December 31.

Photographer Ricardo Barros’ 360-degree panoramas are the latest installment in Princeton University’s “Art of Science” exhibition program. Barros’ photographs challenge our expectations of story and stage. Rather than present discrete events separately, in sequence, and with a natural field of view, here we see everything … all at once. Hence this show’s title: “An Entanglement of Time and Space.”

Barros makes well over 40 shots to produce one panorama. The view of each shot radiates from a central point, and he merges all of the views into a single, seamless image. If you were to step out the right side of his photograph, you would re-enter on the left. And, because a person photographed at one location early in the process may reappear later at a different location in the same photograph, the timeline is collapsed.

“Seeing the unseeable is at the heart of Ricardo Barros’ photographs,” writes Michael Lemonick, lecturer at Princeton University. A flattened, 360-degree panorama disrupts our comfortable world order. “This disruption echoes the way scientists think,” Lemonick says. Barros adds, “Michael is referring to Einstein’s theory of relativity. But, as an artist, I find it easier to think of these photographs as stories with a nonlinear narrative.”

Barros’ photographs are in the permanent collections of 11 museums, including the Smithsonian Museum of American Art and Museu de Arte de São Paulo. He was awarded Fellowships in Photography from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts in 1984 and 2021, and he is a contributing writer to ICON magazine. Ricardo and his wife, artist Heather Barros, have lived in Princeton since 1990.

“An Entanglement of Time and Space” is on view through December 31 at the Friend Center for Engineering Education, Princeton University Campus, 7799 Williams Street. It is open to the public weekdays, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., when classes are in session.

For more information, visit ricardobarros.com/entanglement