Chapter 8 - Momenti Mori - The photographic Book and Memory
‘As soon as the camera shutter is clicked, a photograph is already history. a memory of some kind. The photographic medium can be about the present, sometimes the future, but mostly it is about the past.’
‘All photographs are momenti mori’ (Susan Sontag)
I see these quotes and understand what they mean, a photograph is clearly a visual memory of a moment, however I do also feel that it is not the image that holds the memory, it is the story behind it, I will look at Jake’s nans photographs and see them, but unless she tells me the story of why that image was taken, I do not know what it is about. As Roland Barthe stated - ‘Not only is the Photograph never, in essence a memory, but it actually blocks memory, quickly becomes a counter memory. - I do agree with this statement, and it has been proven that the more photographs we take of an event the less likely we are to remember it, and I suppose that could be because due to the photographs, we do not feel the need to remember it, however even though they do hold value and memory to an extent, only the person who took the photograph or the people at the event will know what the memories are and so the photograph is, in my opinion, just an aspect of memory.
I must say though I am very grateful for them as it helps to have them to get Jake’s nan to tell me the stories behind them.
Whilst going through this section of the book, I noticed this book by Sophie Calle called Rachel, Monique which displays presentation dedicated to her mother Rachel-Monique Sindler-Calle-Pagliero-Gonthier who passed away in 2006. the book consists of archival material as well as her journals and more recent shots as well. I was very interested in this book as I admired how she used more than one archive on the page which has inspired me to possibly use a variety of them on the page instead of just one which I have been doing recently. I could possibly use a variety of images from one event or one year to have a good amount of detail and not too boring as Jake’s nans life has never been boring. I feel this could signify the fact that her childhood years seemed a little more straight forward and so having single images for those years seems good and then when she starts growing up she got herself into possibly more complex situations and so several images help to demonstrate this complexity.