Photography and cultural memory: a methodological exploration

Abstract

Abstract Recent years have seen a flowering of research and scholarship on cultural memory across the humanities and social sciences. Among the many facets of this work is a quest to extend and deepen understanding of how personal memory operates in the cultural sphere: its distinguishing features; how, where and when it is produced; how people make use of it in their daily lives; how personal or individual memory connects with shared, public forms of memory; and ultimately, how memory figures in, and even shapes, the social body and social worlds. Personal and family photographs figure importantly in cultural memory, and memory work with photographs offers a particularly productive route to understanding the social and cultural aspects of memory. Beginning with a study of one photograph, this article develops and interrogates a set of interlocking memory work methods for investigating the forms and everyday uses of ‘ordinary photography’ and how these figure in the production of memory. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many thanks to Nick Wadham‐Smith and Lolli Aboutboul of the British Council for making this project possible; to Philip Schlesinger and his colleagues for their encouraging feedback on a version of this article presented at a seminar in the Department of Film and Media, University of Stirling, December 2006; to Jiang Jiehong for checking an earlier draft of this article; to Stephan Feuchtwang for his extremely helpful suggestions; and above all to Yu Zhun and the others who took part in the ‘Eye to Eye’ workshop for their generous and enthusiastic collaboration. Notes 1. Developed initially by Max Weber in relation to sociological inquiry, Verstehen is an approach that involves understanding the object of inquiry from within, by means of empathy, intuition or imagination; as opposed to knowledge from without, by means of observation or calculation (Weber 1968 Weber, Max. 1968. Economy and society, New York: Bedminster Press. [Google Scholar]). 2. The workshop was conducted by the author at a British Council Conference, ‘Eye to Eye’, London, November 2004. See http://www.counterpoint‐online.org/cgi‐bin/item.cgi?id = 553; INTERNET (accessed 19 December 2006). Of the thirteen workshop participants, around ten nationalities, and many backgrounds and current circumstances, were represented. 3. The conversation took place in December 2005 in the British Council office in Manchester. Because it is in effect an auratic object, the importance of having the actual photograph to hand in this kind of memory work cannot be overstated. The interview was audiotaped and quotations in the text are taken from the transcript. 4. My thanks to Stephan Feuchtwang for drawing attention to the concept of the caesural event and its specific relevance to Jack's memory‐story. 5. On wallet photographs, A. D. Coleman relates a telling anecdote about a group of students, most of whom, on being asked how many were carrying snapshots of themselves, family and friends, reached for their handbags or wallets. When warned not to produce the photographs unless they were willing to burn them, ‘not a single photograph came forth’ (Coleman 1979 Coleman, A. D. 1979. Light readings: A photography critic's writings, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar], 132).