David Bates’ essay The Memory of Photography addresses the contribution photography has made to the ‘relation of memory and history’.  Photography is traditionally viewed as a ‘time machine, a place for remembering’ but it’s purpose is constantly changing, particularly in the digital age, and perhaps this is why those traditional considerations are so pertinent now.

Freud identified the distinction between ‘Natural Memory’, the normal human ability to recollect, and ‘Artificial Memory’, devices created by humans to extend and aid human memory.   Kracauer compared  photography to historiography as they both rely on historical narrative.  Le Goff wrote of the collective cultural remembrance devices introduced by kings such as archives, libraries and museums.

Le Goff investigated how photography’s role is seen to be helping to trigger specific common visualised memory, referencing Bordieu’s discussion of family albums.  The photographs in the album serve as an aide-memoire to share collective memories through the family.  Bates investigates whether this application as collective memory aide can be applied to other social and cultural groups too?  Does photography help these groups to form or at least recognise ‘acquired characteristics’?  Examples of such areas which could be included are: police; media; arts; and independent social group photographs, each contributing to establishing a ‘truth of social remembrance’.

Foucoult discussed how ‘popular memory’ was being obstructed; that popular literature, what we are taught in school and cheap books giving popular memory no way of expressing itself.  In other words, people are shown not memories of who they were but what they must remember having been.  In a world of social media and ‘fake news’ this argument seems to me more relevant than ever in modern times.  As we move forward into an ever more uncertain future, what memories will be instigated by the photographs we are making and seeing today?  Will the collective memory remember how things really were or will it be distorted by our media and ourselves presenting a selective public face to the world or at least the internet)?

I think the concerns around memory being altered by misleading objects, including photographs, are valid.  An experiment in 2002 found that half of the participants were tricked into believing they remembered a hot air balloon ride as a child from fake photographic evidence. It is easy to imagine this process being recreated through the media or schooling and influencing collective memory.

References:

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17540763.2010.499609 [Accessed 20 August 2020]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24286258 [Accessed 20 August 2020]