Photographic Memory An exploration of photography’s role in remembering
BECKY STILL || SENIOR THESIS, 2015 — 2016
Photographic Memory An exploration of photography’s role in remembering
TABLE OF CONTENTS i Preface 1 Introduction Project & Process
2 Setting the Scene Context & Family
3 Memory
Memory Production Neurological Memory and the Photograph Infantile Amnesia
4 Snapshots 5 Captions 6 Conclusion
Preface For my Senior Thesis project I spent the last year examining old family photographs in relation to the traditions and key moments they depicted from both my generation as well as my father’s. Through this process I began to notice moments of mirrored lives; photographs taken in the same place with the same people one generation removed, capturing moments that could have been either one of us. This discovery began my interest in exploring how photography, specifically snapshot family photography, impacts the way in which individuals remember moments, make choices, and define who they are, whether knowing or unknowingly. Using neurological research on memory production, theoretical writings on photography and memory, as well as experiential writings from various members of my family, I aimed to answer these questions within the framework of my own family’s snapshots. The text in this book was written over the course of the last eight months and is a compilation of research done on photography as a medium, the science behind memory, and the theoretical relationship between the two in addition to written accounts from myself and my father. A list of sources is available at the back of the book. The imagery in the book has been sourced from three places: my father’s family snapshot archive, my childhood photo albums, and my archive of photography taken at Cape Cod over the last eight years.
Introduction The mind and the notion of memory has been a topic of interest with humans for centuries, spanning all fields of research from science to anthropology, medicine to history, and psychology to art. Over the centuries, the intersection of these fields have led to the current state of scientific, theoretical and cultural understanding of memory. While the foundation of our understanding comes from psychological and neurological research, the desire to visualize what memory means can manifest itself visually through art. The development of photography as a medium has opened up the conversation surrounding visual representation of memory to more questions. Mediums such as drawing and painting that have existed considerably longer than photography created imagery
that is hard to disconnect from the perspective of the individual; by the nature of the mediums, the artists hand, aesthetic and objective are all inherently present. The development of photography brought about the potential for a neutral means of capturing a moment in time; truly encapsulating a memory in a image. In her book Camera Culture, Halla Beloff shares a similar thought process: a photograph promises reality and truth and scientific precision.1 As photography evolved and became more easily accessible to the general public, the genre of snapshot photography was developed. Separate from fine art photography, snapshots are informal photographs, especially one taken quickly by a hand-held camera most notably used in family photography. By exploring the direct neurological connection between memory and imagery, the art of snapshot photography creates paradoxical issues in relation to the notion of photographs as memories. While photography as a medium is relatively new, it seems to have integrated itself into daily life in ways other mediums never have. Even early on in the history of photography, the general public was drawn to it for its ability to capture a moment, to preserve how they were for future reference. In addition to the involvement of artists, photography’s history is rich with cultural uses from portraiture, to documentation, to snapshots. Photography has greatly impacted history and the way history is explored. Historians have used photographs as evidence supporting how things were in a specific place and time since its inception. People like director Errol Morris, in his book Believing is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography, examine how this practice has been refuted over the years, questioning the validity of it as an accurate enough representation or depiction of reality to be utilized in this way. Presence of the Hand This use of photography as accurate, truthful depiction of a moment crosses over into the everyday through family photo albums which are see as frozen moments in time, a time capsule to preserve past memories. While historically, the medium of photography has been framed as a means of capturing ‘a moment in time’, it can be argued that photography is full of conscious choices that impact the objectivity of the image created, and outside perspectives that can influence the way something is recalled. There may be no definitive answer to the question of photography’s validity in relation to memory, it is easy to see that there are distinct factors in the production of snapshot photography that create a hesitation when thinking of images as direct connections to memories. “Memories are created just as much as they are recalled from photographs; our recollections never remain the 5 same, even if the photograph appears to represent a fixed image of the past” . Separating the idea of memory from the ability or action of remembering helps to steer the issue away from the solid neurological understanding of memory, but makes questioning the validity of photography as a medium for capturing memories imperative.
Setting the Scene Context & Family Relationship to Photography: Photographs have always covered my family home; every room has walls and bookcases covered in photographs, spanning from the early 1900s to the present, of various members of my family at various moments in time. In his teens and young adult years my father was a photographer. He spent a great deal of his time shooting both color and black and white film and slides. Growing up, I was surrounded by the evidence of this part of his past and found myself enamored by the process and the result. Analog photography was the first medium I worked with that felt like it was something I wanted to pursue indefinitely. As a result, my main medium in my practice the last few years has been photography. Relationship to Memory: My paternal grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s for the last few years of her life, and the majority of her life while I was alive. Over the years I watched as slowly she slipped away into the abyss of confusion where names and faces, memories and stories ceased to exist in her world. It fascinated and terrified me that the human mind is capable of erasing itself. More recently, my maternal grandmother developed dementia and it manifested itself through moments where she thought she was living in past moments of her life; waiting for dinner reservations with family members that have long since passed, planning visits to homes friends no longer live in. These experiences have made me more interested in how we remember things and how our minds work. Relationship to the Location: The village of Barnstable is a small town located on Cape Cod, Mass.; picturesque and quaint, it is a tiny beach community that is a popular location for families to spend their summers on the water, surrounded by the beautiful Cape Cod bay. In the early 1940’s , my grandparents purchased a home here, hoping to create a space for their family to grow and enjoy one another’s company in the sun and sand. Over 7 decades later, the cottage on Harvey Ave. is still overflowing with Stills, loving every minute close to the sea. Cape summers are my most prevalent childhood family memories. Our tradition every summer, like clockwork, was to trek from Pennsylvania up north to this tiny town filled with generations of aunts, uncles and cousins that shared this street and the traditions inherited with the homes. This was the same trek that my father made a generation earlier. Through the process of working on this project, I spent time speaking with him about his experiences as a child, his memories of his childhood as well as of mine, and questioned whether he thought
there were direct correlations between the photographs taken of him and the photographs he took of me. The captured moments from both generations, as well as my interpretation of the spaces now will serve as a visual reference for the exploration of memories through photography.
Memory As the foundation for this project, it was imperative to have a basic understanding of the way in which human minds generate memories. The process by which the human mind processes information into memory is referred to as encoding. Certain types of information encoding happens without our awareness, while others only become seconded if the person is paying attention to it. The way that verbal information is encoded differs from how visual information is encoded. As information is encoded into memory, it is separated into one of three types of memory: Sensory, Short Term, or Long Term.8 The process of generating a memory begins with attention, regulated by the thalamus and the frontal lobe, in which a memorable event causes neurons to fire more frequently, making the experience more intense and increasing the likelihood that the event is encoded as a memory. Emotion tends to increase attention, and the emotional element of an event is processed on an unconscious pathway in the brain leading to the amygdala. Only then are the actual sensations derived from an event processed.10 Due to the obvious storage capabilities of the human mind, not every thought, experience or moment from every day are saved. Because of this, neurologists have mapped out how the mind separates experiences into shortterm and long-term memories. One type of memory that contemporary research has begun to map out is referred to as episodic memory. Episodic memory is a person’s unique memory of a specific event, so it will be different from someone else’s recollection of the same experience. 2 Memory, and the study of it, is incredibly fluid; there are always variables that factor into why certain things are remembered versus others, which sensory indicators trigger a specific memory over another. Research done by Conway, a psychologist who focuses on cognitive, applied and biological psychology, has shown that memories can be highly sensitive to visual cues that can activate an image, either directly through content available or indirectly through relational associations. Because visual processing is such an integral part of cognition, episodic memories are generally highly responsive to visual cues3. Therefore, technically speaking, someone is capable of recalling a specific event with the proper prompts, i.e. an image or a scent, that would be lost in the abyss of personal memories without it as an aid. Episodic memory is thought to have nine properties; one of which states that they are often represented in the form As the foundation for this project, it was imperative to have a basic understanding of the way in which human minds generate memories. The process by which the human mind processes information into memory is referred to as encoding. Certain types of information encoding happens without our awareness, while others only become seconded if the person is paying attention to it. The way that verbal information is encoded differs from how visual information is encoded. As information is encoded into memory, it is separated into one of three types of memory: Sensory, Short Term, or Long Term.8 The process of generating a memory begins with attention, regulated by the thalamus and the frontal lobe, in which a memorable event causes neurons to fire more frequently, making the experience more intense and increasing the likelihood that the event is encoded as a memory. Emotion tends to increase attention, and the emotional element of an event is processed on an unconscious pathway in the brain leading to the amygdala. Only then are the actual sensations derived from an event processed.10 Due to the obvious storage capabilities of the human mind, not every thought, experience or moment from every day are saved. Because of this, neurologists have mapped out how the mind separates experiences into shortterm and long-term memories. One type of memory that contemporary research has begun to map out is referred to as episodic memory. Episodic memory is a person’s unique memory of a specific event, so it will be different from someone else’s recollection of the same experience. 2 Memory, and the study of it, is incredibly fluid; there are always variables that factor into why certain things are remembered versus others, which sensory indicators trigger a specific memory over another. Research done by Conway, a psychologist who focuses on cognitive, applied and biological psychology, has shown that memories can be highly sensitive to visual cues that can activate an image, either directly through content available or indirectly through relational associations. Because visual processing is such an integral part of cognition, episodic memories are generally highly responsive to visual cues3. Therefore, technically speaking, someone is capable
of recalling a specific event with the proper prompts, i.e. an image or a scent, that would be lost in the abyss of personal memories without it as an aid. Episodic memory is thought to have nine properties; one of which states that they are often represented in the form of (visual) images.3 Due to their event and experience focus, they are as close to a true representation of what happened from the person’s specific conscious experience stored in long-term memory.3 Episodic memories function within a system referred to as the Self-Memory System (SMS) which is a conceptual framework that emphasizes the interconnectedness of self and memory.4 Because of the SMS’s connection to self and identity, the memory system has a few jointly contradictory demands when thinking about the role and nature of episodic memories. Neurological Memory and the Photograph During the research process for this project, I came across a study done by a team of researchers at Microsoft in the mid-2000s working with patients suffering from forms of amnesia and a camera they called Sensecam. It hangs around the person’s neck and automatically takes photographs every 30 seconds, or when it notices movement, or light change. They can then download the pictures at the end of the day, and flip through them in chronological order. One of the patients involved in the study, Claire Robertson, an amnesiac who can no longer recognize faces, was featured in a Time Magazine article about her experiences using Sensecam. According to the article, functional-MRI scans showed that areas of the brain associated with memory lit up with significantly more activity when she attempted to recall moments and experiences previously reviewed with Sensecam’s 6 photographs than when she attempted to recall without the visual aid. While the ability to view the images taken throughout each day does not help to cure her amnesia, it enables moments of clarity and flickers recognition of what had happened. While neurological research is not stating that imagery can be used as a sort of fill-in-theblank for memory gaps, or even saying that photographs can be entirely representational of a specific moment, the connection between imagery and memory is undeniable. Acknowledging that connection brings up an interesting paradox when thinking about snapshot photography. Snapshot family photography is an example of how culturally people shape the memories of their past, most often of their childhood, based on the imagery that is available to back up specific thoughts or distant memories. Personal photography emerged as a social practice that revolved around families’ desire to save and share their memories of experiences in a way that can be revisited in the future.5 The way in which snapshot photography exists culturally creates the idea that it can be taken at face value, that what you see is what was there, what happened. A family photo album is seen as the documentation of shared memories. With the neurologically proven connection between memory and images in mind, it is easy to see why this belief exists. Snapshot photography does, in fact, capture a moment. But, that does not mean that they truly captured the moment. Perhaps the better way to phrase this is that there is a difference between the way, neurologically speaking, memory and imagery are connected and the way in which someone remembers specific memories that have been photographed The way someone remembers their first trip to the beach or a birthday party could be directly related to the imagery of that moment in time; the specific details recalled may be accurate, but in terms of young childhood memory, the majority of the time a parent or older family member explains what happened or what was happening in that specific image. How much can humans rely on these memories when there is a chance that what we think we remember has really been told to us by others present, or through an image taken from the perspective of another? José Van Dijck, a media and culture researcher, references studies that examines this question in her paper Digital Photography: Communication, Identity, Memory: “Research has shown that people are also easily seduced into creating false memories of their pasts on the basis of unaltered and doctored pictures. In the early 1990s, researchers from America and New Zealand persuaded experimental subjects to believe false narratives about their childhood, written or told by family members and substantiated by ‘true’ photographs. Over the next decade, these findings were corroborated by experiments in which doctored pictures were used; more than 50 percent of all subjects constructed false memories out of old personal photographs 5 that were carefully retouched to depict a scene that had never happened in that person’s life.” The studies mentioned illustrate how easily memory can be manipulated through the perspectives of others and imagery. Our memories are not like a neat, orderly set of information. They do not exist in any sort of sequential order, but rather more closely resembles a jigsaw puzzle — bits of information stored in various places, connected through mutual associations, cues or circumstances. Recollection of memories is another important factor to consider when discussing memory. There are two different classifications of memory retrieval: recall and recognition. Cued Recall is a subcategory of Recall, when specific cues are used to aid in the retrieval of a specific memory.10 Recognition is the ability to remember information or events that have previously happened when there is something stimulating the memory match. Recollection is a subcategory of Recognition, which refers to the process of remembering specific details of a moment or experience after the fact. Often times, the purpose of the cue is to trigger recollection about something that the person would have otherwise forgotten. However, it is easy to see how snapshots from your past can be utilized in this way to trigger real memories, or help to fabricate memories based on what is apparent in the specific image or images from that particular moment in time. One component of most memory studies and research is the relationship that children have with memory. It is very
rare that people are able to remember the majority of their childhood, it often seems to be totally lacking in long term memory. The neurological reasoning behind our inability to recall childhood events is referred to as infantile amnesia, which relates to the level of neuron production during the early years of our lives. Formation of new brain cells increases our capacity for learning, but it also clears the mind of old memories which could explain why infantile amnesia occurs. The idea behind this condition is what made me continue on with this project. While it does not, nor does any of the other research, help to answer any of the questions posed, it continues to add layers to them. If I am unable to recall moments from my childhood because, neurologically, the memories do not exist in their true form then it can be said that my memories are formed by the photos taken of me by my father whose memories of the mirrored moments in his own childhood existed through the photographs of himself in the same moments. The notion of infantile amnesia perpetuates the cyclical nature of the question at hand: how much of our memories are truly our memories and how much of them are we made to believe are our memories through the use of visual aids such as family snapshots? Can photographs still, or could they ever, be considered a reliable enough source in order to be used in such a foundational way? And if our foundational childhood memories are based on family albums and snapshots, are we always reflecting the experiences and thoughts of the generation before us onto our own lives because they are the ones that described the moments to us? I have no answers for any of these questions, and the questions themselves continue to get more existential the more I think about them. For this current generation it will be even more so, with the technological advances of contemporary culture. The ability to have literally every moment of their lives recorded will be an interesting development with how identities form and memories are structured when there is seemingly no need to remember anything when technology can do that for you.
Contemporary Culture In some ways, it can easily be argued that contemporary photography has become a literal stand in for memory. With the creation of cellphone photography, Facebook and Instagram, technology has allowed contemporary society to commemorate every moment of someone’s life. From the mundane, such as the shoes you choose to wear to work, to the eventful, with specific hashtags for guests of a wedding to tag their snapshots for the happy couple to review later, every moment has the ability to be recorded. Apple’s latest iPhone, the 6S generation, pushes this notion farther by incorporating what they call “Live Photo” into their camera software. Live Photo is a new feature that “brings your photos to life” by taking rapid fire images of a moment, “rather than freezing a moment in time with a still photo, you can now capture the moments just before and after you take the picture, complete with movement.” Live Photo is advertised as a way for you to truly capture moments in time, to be able to relive your memories again and again. In this case, photography is being advertised as a literal way to capture your memories. Personal photographs can become meaningful in their ability to be used as cues to activate memories, as noted earlier, but how does the ability to document every moment photographically impact this? If everything is captured on our phones and stored on multiple platforms, where does our actual memory exist?
Captions Through the process of sifting through decades of photos, of myself as well as of my father, I expected to find captions that were detailed or, at the very least, mildly informative. Instead, I found a consistent lack of information all together. From the photos of my childhood, more often than not there is simply a scribbled number representing the year it was taken. Dates are rarely detailed down to the day, and only occasionally include names or locations. The recent process of organizing the family archive also lead to the re-discovery of photographs and news clippings from my paternal grandfather’s time fighting in World War II. While the photos and clippings are interesting in and of themselves, providing insight into the specific places the of war and what life was like in battle, the backs of them were especially interesting to me. That standard of information seemed to be consistent through my mother’s family archive as well. Realizing how natural it was for this project to be so focused on my father and his family’s traditions, I began to ask more questions about the photographs from my mother’s childhood. Having never seen these photos before, or having ever met the majority of those pictured, what became interesting with her photos was then her attempt to label the photos for me. Scribbled notes in my grandmothers hand noted events and years, but often not much more than that, leaving my mother to sift through her childhood memories trying to identify lost faces and mystery places. Beginning as a footnote to the project, the exploration of captions began to feel like a relevant tangent to the question of photography’s relationship to memory. Scribbled on the back, they are the most common way in which people identify places, times and faces in old photographs. I find the information noted on the backs to be incredibly interesting - why some have notations while others have none, why some detail the day and others
simply have a date. I think that captions are one of the more influential elements of photographic motivated remembrance. More often than not, the captions are written by someone other than you (especially when dealing with childhood photographs), so the content deemed important was decided by someone else but is often used to spark recognition or bring forth a specific memory. Captions provide a sparknote-eqsue insight into moments of your life, dictated by those capturing them.
Conclusion Through the process of working on this project, I have posed many more questions than I have answered, if I have even answered any. The seemingly never ending string of thoughts examining this relationship, as well as my own relationship with images of myself and how my personal memories are affected by these questions, has left me with an ambiguous end to this project. While the end goal was never to have a concrete answer to any questions that came up throughout the project, the act of posing the questions has become more important than answers would be. Identity generation stems directly from our experiences and our memories; the idea that memories from our past have been impacted by the hand of another leads to questions about identity formation and personal perspective. Am I the way I am because its how I want to be? Or am I the way I am because of things that were predetermined for me by family members during pivotal experiences, memories, or through the use of their voices telling me my experiences? Not sure I’ll ever have an answer, but the research done for the purpose of this project paired with the pairs of photographs from my father’s and my own childhood creates an interesting dialogue that I hope comes across to you as the viewer.
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