I found The Memory of Photography – (Bate, 2010) very interesting and raised some pertinent questions and perhaps answers inside my head for my own photography and photography in general going forwards.

The photograph was seen historically as infinite – an indefinite memory or recording of a scene. Now, even though digital is in my opinion more resilient than analogue was/is, the photograph is often seen as finite because photographs are printed relatively rarely in typical people’s workflows nowadays unfortunately and it is mainly seen only on screen.

Yes, a photograph can wear away or be lost or damaged but it usually requires deliberate intervention for this to happen. An example of this was the project Rubbings (Strand, 2015) in the exhibition Getting Better and Worse at the Same Time (Strand, 2015). Alternatively, more generally with limited edition prints, the prints are made intentionally only a few times, presumably for commercial reasons. Sometimes the negatives are themselves destroyed to preserve the integrity of the limited edition prints as was the case with P.H. Emerson early on in photography’s history.

If you take a photograph at ‘face value’ literally, for what it could be considered as a permanent record, while forgetting momentarily about it being (academically) finite, then you can start to see the unique role photographs have and may well continue to serve in history and life. That role would be, a tool, which expresses what is seen in any scene. This tool can be used in many ways, with the most obvious one being a memory/record of a scene from one person – (the photographer) to another (either the photographer themselves or to share with others).

I would suggest it is when the photograph plays on itself (within the role of permanence on a flat surface) that it begins to become a paradox. As the photograph is a meta entity and yet records things which have the potential to be records themselves of past events, each memory (photograph) preserves another memory.

These memories are ‘artificial’ in that they aren’t stored in our own brains. Perhaps, we now rely on artificial memory so much that natural memory isn’t as sharp as it once was. Photographs serve as a major source of artificial memory and yet it is linked strongly to natural memory in form: ‘All the forms of auxiliary apparatus which we have invented for the improvement or intensification of our sensory functions are built on the same model as the sense organs themselves’ – (Freud, 1925). It is no surprise then, why we default to photography as a perceived form of remembering as it also has the potential to capture more more of a moment’s detail than a natural memory. As well as this, because of its potential permanence, less is ultimately forgotten. These artificial memories in the form of photographs can be personal like in family albums but also collective like with photographs of famous historical events. Photography nowadays, in archives both analogue and digital has affected our actual memory significantly with private collections but also collectively with famous photographs. It is like we have singular mystic writing-pads but also more pertinently a collective Mystic writing-pad in the ether of media, which incidentally is growing at a rapid pace.

My mind was also moving at a rapid pace after reading about this! I started thinking if the aide-memoire (artificial memory) was taking over and becoming more prevalent than the memory, the aide-mémoire was becoming the reality. Then would the person/people using the aide-mémoire be living in a kind of virtual reality? Photographs for example, could be the instruments for another world. Another question I raised to myself was: ‘Why is memory and the methods for recording memories so important to us?’ You could theoretically live a life, where everything was in the present or looking forwards. Instead, we tend to naturally gravitate towards collecting memories and since its invention, photography was and still is seen, by the majority, as the way of recording these precious memories. With the increasing technological advancements in artificial memory archives, will people rely on their natural memory much at all? Memory is one thing people naturally ‘cling’ to but it might still be affected by these artificial memory archives of photographs and other forms of media. Perhaps, because of this attachment to natural memory, when digital photography started to take over, there became present a lot of controversy over the validity of photography going forwards. This was because of the amount of manipulation possible ‘after the fact’, with digital photography. If the subsequent photographs were affected internally, with processing technologies, distrust could become a factor by part of the eventual viewer. Nowadays (just about), a famous photograph expresses the truth of a collective social remembrance. This is in comparison to: ‘The family album expresses the truth of social remembrance.’ – (Bate, 2010), where the social remembrance is ‘limited’ to the family. I would say with digital photography in particular there is increasing distrust towards a famous (or personal) photograph expressing the truth of a collective (or singular) social remembrance because of sometimes there being manipulation after the fact. This is magnified because of the wild scale of digital media consumption these days.

Another reason this distrust may grow amongst certain social groups and generations would be for the reason: because photography historically was only specific to a limited number of countries and of course a certain time, largely these ‘memories’ in the form of photographs presumably only apply to certain groups of people. The culture of the artificial memories in the form of photographs (probably Western) helps Western people identify with these memories more strongly.

‘an archive not a question of the past’ – (Bate, 2010) but rather, ‘It is a a question of the future, the question of a response, a promise and of a responsibility for tomorrow’ – (Derrida, 1995). This goes back to the concept of ‘late photography’ as suggested by Campany (2003) which I looked at in: ‘Late Photography’. Meanwhile, it could possibly point to a reason the Western countries were so powerful when they had a monopoly over photography’s history. As Bate (2010) remarks: ‘the ability to inscribe events, descriptions and traces is a site of social power; a means for some social groups to impose their will over others’. This for me shows how powerful any genre of photography was historically and the implications for this on not only cultures utilising these resources but also those cultures, who have, more recently made photography more integral in their history.

While I agree partially as Bate suggests: it is true that ‘Artificial Memories create uncertainty for the human faculty of memory’ so we ‘no longer trust our memory as our own’ – (Bate, 2010), overall I would say without the images as a meta-archive for collective memory anyway, the world would be less conscientious about its history, even if this history has been somewhat biased. Applied to landscape, postcards advertise places a lot of people haven’t been to yet the people feel like they’ve been to these places themselves.

Photography (digital) behaves as: such is the plethora nowadays of undiscovered yet familiar records (photographs) of different places on the internet or in exhibitions, it is like we have a permanent visual memory bank waiting to be tapped into – not unlike our long-term natural memory, except that it is accessible whenever – it doesn’t need to be triggered to be accessed. Like our long-term memory, photographs, while always being stored, can be mistrusted due to ’steering’ of the truth by protagonists of photography. Postcard views in particular, make us feel like we’ve been there before. Popular internet search engines are readily accessible.

Photographs with some historical context within them are powerful, they can trigger involuntary memories. This doesn’t necessarily have to mean direct records of the historical moment but rather can also be renditions or interpretations of famous historical memories. Alternatively, the photographer could make interpretations of childhood memories so the reenactments are personal. I could try ‘twisting’ photographs I make to act as triggers for cultural or personal memories which means something socially or personally (for myself) respectively. This reminded me of the work of Tom Hunter where he draws upon inspiration from other historical artists: ‘The restaging of historical painterly tableaux in a contemporary setting for which Hunter is perhaps best known’ – (Slyce, n.d.). For example with Death of Colotti (Hunter, 2009), he ‘draws on Delacroix’s mammoth tableaux Death of Sardanapalus, 1827′ – (Slyce, n.d.) for inspiration.

References:

Bate, D. (2010). The Memory of Photography. [Online] Taylor and Francis Online. Available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17540763.2010.499609?scroll=top&needAccess=true [Accessed 2 Nov. 2015].

Delacroix, E. (1827). Death of Sardanapalus. [Oil on Canvas] Paris: Louvre.

Derrida (1995). In. Bate, D. (2010). The Memory of Photography. [Online] Taylor and Francis Online. Available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17540763.2010.499609?scroll=top&needAccess=true [Accessed 2 Nov. 2015].

Freud, S. (1925). In. Bate, D. (2010). The Memory of Photography. [Online] Taylor and Francis Online. Available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17540763.2010.499609?scroll=top&needAccess=true [Accessed 2 Nov. 2015].

Hunter, T. (2009). Death of Colotti. [Photograph] Available at: http://www.tomhunter.org/unheralded-stories-series/ [Accessed 2 nov. 2015].

Slyce, J. (n.d.). In. Hunter, T. (2009). Unheralded Strories Series. Available at: http://www.tomhunter.org/unheralded-stories-series/ [Accessed 2 nov. 2015].

Strand, C. (2015). Getting Better and Worse at the Same Time. [Exhibition] 29 Apr – 6 Jun 2015. Grimaldi Gavin, London.

I read ‘Safety in Numbness’ – (Campany, 2003) and found it raised some interesting questions surrounding the idea of ‘late photography’, which I then attempted to answer:

Why is/was a photograph often seen as more ‘memorable than those that move [videography]’ – (Campany – 2003), in the eyes of ‘the popular consciousness’ – (Campany – 2003)?

Maybe because a photograph is like a ‘slice’ of reality.

Why this is seen as more sacred than a much bigger ‘chunk’ of semi-reality may be for the reason that video is often regarded as only a semi-reality, not a reality that the photograph has come to possess an aura of. Where I believe this ‘aura’ comes from, would be the photographs’ place in history and how we have come to recognise the photograph as a symbol of something official in the world, while future generations might perceive other media like video as ‘official’.

However, there remains something else to consider; in that taking a chunk of reality (video) for future generations may not be as special as the slice of reality (photographs) is now for current and prior generations. This would be because although the notion of what is ‘official’ may have changed for future generations, the photograph is still more ‘digestible’ than the larger piece of video footage.

This is interesting because, while TV footage is still many moments in time pieced together, the photographs, by taking a single slice of time, makes that moment special and in doing so creates a ‘fleeting’ reality.

Is recording (a photograph) different from documenting (footage)?

It gets more complicated when a single frame is taken from a piece of video footage, as the observer, at least from my experience, would want to verify whether the single slice was taken from video footage or whether it was indeed a ‘genuine’ photograph.

However, that was true and clear when photographs were obviously distinguishable from video footage ‘frame grabs’, in the past, where the frame grabs would typically have been of a much lower quality in terms of sharpness, because video technology was not as advanced as it is nowadays.

Nowadays, it can be much harder to distinguish the frame grab from a ‘genuine’ photograph as video technology has improved and so it raises questions over the value of photographs as a single frame can be chosen from many hundreds of split images from a few seconds of video footage.

Countering this argument, I would naturally think of the famous ‘decisive moment’ terminology in photography, where the photographer uses their skill in creating a timeless, decisive moment, as most famously illustrated by Henri Cartier-Bresson’s street photography.

However, selecting a single moment from many moments in a piece of video footage could arguably mean the decisive moment is captured anyway, as well the surrounding footage being captured more ‘effectively’.

I suppose this would be similar to the work of some appropriation artists with Goole Street View like Mishka Henner’s No Man’s Land (Henner, 2011), although the timing and composition of each potential frame would be much more flexible, with the video footage.

There would be little skill, in my opinion, in creating the eventual image from the video footage but if the result remained ‘decisive’, then it could still be considered a piece of Art or at least a valid photograph.

What is done with this ‘slice’ of reality after it has been recorded?

It can be used (via memory – a common association of photography) to change the perception of our world of the past (late photography), the present or for the future, ironically. Changing the perception of our world in the present or future would differ from late photography, by addressing issues through ideas in suggestive manners as or before they happen. This is because the photograph is also commonly associated with permanence – a non-deteriorating segment of time (very arguable) but an association of memory – by looking at the past.

However, this reality can change based upon the state of the world as it stands and it could be possible perhaps, that other cultures/times perceive photography/video and/or the things they represent differently.

Is all photography ‘late’ photography?

A photograph can be seen to be simplistic in the way it is commonly observed: as a 2-dimensional object but I wouldn’t call it primitive as what is represented on the flat surface can be complex and even challenge the flat surface. I agree there is a certain ‘allure’ to its apparent simplicity, cutting through the complexities of moving media or diversity of technologies, in an incisive and potentially telling manner.

This is countered by David Campany: ‘it [the photograph] says very little itself, while allowing all that audio-visual information to support it from the wings’ – (Campany, 2003).

However, I believe he misses the semi-reality attribute a moving image possesses, compared to the seeming reality of a single photograph.

Having said this, if an important event was happening, unplanned before me, I would reach for video footage over photography to document it most effectively.

This would be for a present tense situation, where the documenting was most crucial, rather than something where a lasting impact had been made or had to be made.

Therefore, perhaps photography belongs for past and future issues, rather than the present.

It could be argued that while photography could be a viable option for recording future tense issues, so could video footage. However, I would say, in my opinion, a photograph might be more telling in terms of the way these issues were told creatively, at least for the moment. This admittedly, is from the perspective of someone who knows little concerning videography.

For photography not to turn up ‘late’ to a scene and simply record the ‘aftermath’, it should intervene at some point, with the landscape as it is being created. This would be different from photographing ‘action’ on the battlefield, as it happens, by photojournalists for example. The photojournalists would probably not be intervening beforehand or recording afterwards but rather documenting in the present, where their efforts might hopefully make a difference soon afterwards.

My initial responses (or at least my memories of my responses) at the time when I heard and saw via television media, moving images concerning 9/11, were very mixed and included responses of uncertainty, unreality and the unimaginable. Yet all these responses were apparently evident through television media. This, ironically was the same media that made my responses uncertain anyway.

My prevailing memory was that of uncertain shock at what had happened and this was made no more tangible by the fact that I saw it almost wholly through television. My feelings were nevertheless powerful ones but I question whether they would have been more powerful, had they been based upon photographs predominantly? My guess would be probably not; however, I deemed this assertion was because the related photographs that were taken at the time, were unprepared (because of the nature of the event) and so would not have been as incisive as a prepared for shot of say a war scene.

Meanwhile, Meyerowitz’s (2006) Aftermath series, I discovered were a detached and retrospective look at the location where the World Trade Centres had once stood. I found this to be in stark contrast with my initial memories. Although his photographs showed the relative disarray and chaos at the site, it was clearly ‘late’ photography and so reflected many people’s or onlooker’s secondary reactions to what had happened.

There was a subordinate theme going on for me with Meyerowitz’s photographs too. While they were unbelievable in the scale and disorder of the upheaval before there viewer’s eyes, they also remained impassive and still; a quality I would attribute to most ‘late’ photography and one that lent itself towards harsh reality that only a photograph (perhaps only in the aftermath) or someone’s with their own eyes (in the present or from memory) could believe.

References:

Campany, D. (2003). Safety in Numbness. In. Green, D. (ed.) Where is the Photograph? Photoworks/Photoforum.

Henner, M. (2011). No Man’s Land. [Photograph] Available at: http://cargocollective.com/mishkahenner/filter/works/2011-4 [Accessed 18th Sept. 2015].

Meyerowitz, J. (2006). Aftermath. 1st ed. New York: Phaidon Press.

The picturesque, in my opinion, works to a certain extent, as long as the landscape conforms and is picturesque itself. While it is (very) possible to compose a landscape in such a manner that even the harshest of landscapes appear picturesque, the photographer, in that instance, has to ‘mould’ the landscape, through composure, into their ideologies of the picturesque (if that is what they are trying to achieve). An example of a photographer who was capable of this ‘moulding’ through composure was Carleton Watkins, with ‘Malakoff Diggins’ – Watkins (1871) for instance, showing a picturesque image, where the actual scene hadn’t been so picturesque. However, this ‘post-rendering’ of the landscape becomes more difficult, the harsher the actual landscape itself was landscaped physically originally; not to mention, more deceiving. The method I could see to counter this difficulty, would be intervention of the landscape itself, so that it renders naturally picturesque beforehand. This would be by means of land art of some sort.

An effective or successful landscape photograph, for me, would be composed in such a manner that when viewed, the landscape photographer appeared to have some control over the landscape’s variables. On the other hand/as well as this, the landscape could potentially be landscaped originally so that it appeared picturesque or idyllic anyway – before the photograph had even been composed.

My reasoning for both these approaches requiring the successful photograph to have some form of control over the variables in the photograph, was that the eventual viewer naturally tries to resolve the components of the photograph into picturesque ideals. Therefore, depending on what the photographer wants to achieve, the components of the photograph should reflect or oppose these picturesque ideals. This would be in order for the eventual viewer to infer meaning behind the photograph, which to some extent, if picturesque, would be based upon a reflection of themselves ideally viewing the landscape, where some kind of order was present within themselves and also the landscape.

References:

Watkins, C. (1871). Malakoff Diggins. [Photograph] San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.