The Memory of Others

Introduction

Photography’s relationship to memory has always interested and bothered me. Perhaps, it was not the relationship itself that I had a problem with but the way in which memories had always seemed fallible and changeable whereas photographs fixed things and kept the past as it was. If photographs meant something because they helped us remember, then why was it that memory did not seem to be consistent or reliable in the way that photographs appeared to be? The focus of this chapter is orientated around two lines of thought. The first articulates the relationship of photography to memory through making and exploring the claim that memory renders the “noumenal” mutability of photographic meaning. In other words, the fallible nature of memory shapes how photographic meaning is essentially changeable. The second position considers memory itself. For me, memory is not a single homogenised process only linked to recall, but as neuroscience understands it, it is something associated with predictive thought and perception (Seth, 2019). My argument, in relation to memory, is that while its predictive capacity creates models through which we meaningfully navigate life, memory may also act to shield us from lived experience. When thought through in this way, memory operates as if were a screen preventing access to the reality of both the present and the past. In short, memory helps to maintain a distance from actual experiences. Henri Bergson suggests something similar in Matter and Memory (1919) when he describes memory as a way to withdraw from the present moment (1919, p.94). And in Childhood Memories and Screen Memories (1981), Sigmund Freud identified how screen memories were a protective mechanism that “screened” traumatic childhood events.

By bringing these ways of thinking together, I hope to articulate something different about how photographs function. If memory really does keep lived experience at a distance and if photographs are understood to have an ontological connection to memory, then I claim that photographs do not show or record reality but, instead, they also shield us from it. I will conclude by reflecting on the vast number of photographs we are exposed to in the twenty-first century by suggesting that, while they may show us things we may not have seen or remind us of moments that have passed, the sheer number of images we are exposed to also has the unfortunate effect of creating a limit to the conceptual richness of thought. My argument is that by encountering more and more photographs our thinking becomes dominated by images and, as a result, the development of abstract, non-visual ideas is curtailed.