save to my links [ + ] |
 |
|
TOPIC SECTION:
Forget me not?
|
In Marcel Proust’s (1871-1922) autobiographical novel Remembrance of Things Past, just one bite of a madeleine is enough to transport the narra
 |
Locket with daguerreotype and lock of hair, c1855
Credit: National Museum of Photography, Film & Television/Science & Society Picture Library |
tor into an extended reverie where he vividly experiences the past as a simultaneous part of the present. The taste of the biscuit is a trigger for ‘invo
| Images can stimulate memories but memories are not images |
luntary memory’ - an immediate, all-embracing, almost physical sensation. Occasionally, we have all experienced such involuntary memories. Usually stimulated by smell, touch or taste rather than by sight, they can stir up extremely powerful emotions. Compared with these, photography, with its frozen, static and unchanging representations of the past, is a very poor memory trigger.
Does a photograph really enable us to remember a person as he really was or an event as it actually happened? Does the sight of someone bring back the sound of her voice, her smell, the way she walked? Can a photograph of a childhood holiday ever bring back the sensation of warm sand slipping between our toes? Images can stimulate memories but memories are not images. They are sensations. As such, they cannot be encompassed within the boundaries of visual representation - photographic or not.
Some have argued that for photography truly to serve the cause of memory, it h
 |
Portrait of a soldier in an embroidered mount, c1870
Credit: National Museum of Photography, Film & Television/Science & Society Picture Library |
as to transcend the merely visual and engage the other senses. It has to become something that you can feel as well as see. Since photography’s invention people have responded to this challenge in many different ways in an attempt to overcome time and space and create an emotional bond between subject and viewer. The results are photographs whose memory potential has been enhanced by adding words, fabric, embroidery, flowers and even human hair - extraordinary works of art created by ordinary people.
|
| |
|
| |
 |
The Kodak Company was the first to sell film on the basis that it ‘preserved memory’. Now digital images seem to threaten the permanence of the photograph. > more |
Since the 19th century attempts have been made to preserve our memories of people through photographs, but these may have also created ‘false memories’. > more | |
you are here: > Home
> Read
> Seeing
> Forget me not
> Forget me not 
Selling memories
Voices - of people involved
