Week 8: Photography

Photography is the art or process of recording and producing image. The word "photography" is derived from the Greek words photos which means "light" and graphein which means "to draw". Photography as we known today began in the late 1830s in France when Joseph Nicéphore Niépce succesfully created a portable camera obscura to expose a pewter plate coated with bitumen to light. The first recorded image that produced through eight hour exposure in bright sunlight. Since then, photography technology has undergone several changes and renovation to what it is now, just a click second of instant and high quality image.

Photography: Relationship between memory and space.

"...the era of popular photography which began with the introduction of the first Kodak camera in 1888 is that of the anonymous photograph...Both sitter and photographer may be no longer identifiable. Yet...these primative pictures are of great historic significance...Through them we have a detailed picture of everyday life of a kind never previously available." - Brian Coe (The Birth of Photography : The Story of the Formative Years, 1800-1900)

What is the relationship between photography and memory?
Does photography affect our view of the past?

Since the early beginning of photography, the photographic image has been regarded as an aide-mémoire. The very act of capturing image signals the moments as worthy of remembering. None of us, in fact, would be surprise to find out that family portraits are among the most common object found in home. Because for us, family photos are very important as they provide a tangible image link to the past i.e. lineage and family history. They can also fill an empty home with warmth when family members are away, as well as bring comfort and preserve precious memories when family members have been lost. Photograph also provide a sense of connectedness. Connection to our past are important to developing and maintaining a sense of place, a sense of personal identity, and often add to our individual sense of purpose and belonging (Sontag, 1979, as cited in Betchan, 2004).

Arguable, photography does give perceptual experience and memorial functions. Batchen (2004), however posed some important question to this: "Is photography indeed a good way to remember thing?" To him, the best way answer this question is for us to define what is exactly mean by "memory". Photography might perhaps stimulate nostalgia but it does not offer the same exact of sense of feeling and emotions of 'what has been' in the past. He argued:

"...the photograph does not really prompt you to remember people the way they moved, the manner of their speech, the sound of their voice, that lift of the eyebrow when they made a joke, their smell, their rasp of skin on yours, the emotions they stirred." (p.15)

Other theorists also critic the claim that photograph's role in aiding memory. Instead, they assert that it actually serves the process of forgetting rather than remembering. Roland Barthes (1981), for example believed that a photograph can do little more than confirm the existence of an object at some other time, in some other place. In other words, photographic image is the frozen illustration of time and space. It only records the surface appearance of 'what has been' in the past, and not the complex meanings associated with sensory experience. For Barthes, memory is 'not as much as image sensation', a photograph is simpler than most memories, and its range is more limited.

Susan Sontag (1979), however reject the pessimist critics of photographic role. She argue that photograph give meaning of 'what has been'. Though we cannot fully experience the same thing, she believed that photograph “give us unearned sense of understanding things, past and present, having both the potential to move us emotionally, but also possibility of holding us at distance through aestheticing images of events.” (as cited in Huisman, 200, p. 41). Thus for Sontag, photograph exist to witness of 'how something, someone, or somewhere once appeared'.

References

Barthes, R. (1981). Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and Wang.

Betchan, G. (2004). Forget Me Not. Photography and Remembrance. New York, USA: Princeton Architectural Press. Pp 8- 35. Retrieved from UBD Ebrary Website.

Brian Coe Kodak Quote. Retrieved October 31, 2010 from http://www.photoquotes.com/popularquotes.aspx?tagname=kodak