Geoffrey Batchen  in Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance (Batchen, 2006) discusses both why people might take portrait photography and some of its uses.  Here is a brief summary with some added thoughts.

• Many early pictures were taken of people looking at other pictures or equally looking at photo albums again. Why was this? Was it so that you could acknowledge the memories of someone who is deceased? Or is it so that you can acknowledge ‘I am (alive)’?
  • This reminded me of the Masahisa Fukase work of portraits of his family where after the death of his father he included a photograph of him in the place he would normally sit.
• Being pictured with a portrait of somebody who is dead or absent turns the portrait taking into an act of remembrance
• Is a photograph actually a good way of remembering things? It is certainly nostalgic but not the same as real memory as you do not see the way they moved, the way they spoke, or the way they felt.
• Barthes certainly did not think photographs were (as good as memory) because you lost the sensation related to memory
• Kracauer thought that photography captured too much information (!) and was too coherent and too linear unlike malleable internal memory (see essay in the Mass Ornament) (Kracauer, 1995)
• Early pictures could be complicated by being covered in layers of paint which again took away from the reality of the person and possibly surrounded by elaborate borders.
  • This is still done in the elaborate scrapbooks that are made today – many with images of children and pets.
• Sometimes portraits were gathered together in patterns surrounded by elaborate borders made of paper or ribbons (or even made into a cushion) to make photographic keepsakes
• This causes a form of collective identity – they could be family snapshots or cultural groupings
  • Think of the Adamson and Hill pictures that led to a painting of the Moderators of the Church of Scotland
• Any photograph that has additional work done on it such as painting or embroidery also has a tactile element to it. This add to the actual feeling from a printed photograph.
• The way photographs are made at least in the pre-digital world could be considered as a chemical fingerprint in itself.
• Photographs were also made into wearable items such as lockets and broaches and even rings (although they would be very small in this case).
• Many of these were family objects exchanged in marriage as well used as mourning items. Others were made into artifacts such as boxes that could contain important items – this turns what is effectively a flat object into three-dimensional object and increases the personalization of it.
• Pictures could be further personalized by adding signatures or other writing. These pictures can be used as a remembrance object. They can also be added to albums and passed around members of the family in an album. In an album of photographs are sequenced and can in fact be moved around within the sequence.
• The photograph might be made into a more three-dimensional object including things like fancy frames, carved items, and even bronze baby boots!
• Hair was also used, both loose and plaited, to act as a memorial/reminder of a person. This was sometimes given us a love gift, sometimes used as a morning aid. The hair stands in for the body of the absent person (therefore the indexical nature of the image becomes doubled. It may become a fetish object or a talisman.
• Were the complex and complicated memorial items such as photographs surrounded by wax wreath made to help you remember because you were afraid of forgetting? Making these items was often done by a member of family and would have been very painstaking – a labour of respect and possibly made to allow the grieving process to take its time. The objects can be very complex and the sheer materiality of them is important.

Back to the question of does photography enhance memory or rather replace it? The more that is added to the picture the more physical it becomes and the more the senses are involved.  A photographic image that can be multiplied with endless copies – but altering it make it become more unique. They are shown in the space between the public and the private.  They become a memory object in themselves. The photograph is a desire not to be forgotten, both the person in the picture and the owner/viewer – ourselves.

References:

Batchen, G. (2006) Forget me not: photography & remembrance. New York; London: Princeton Architectural; Hi Marketing.

Kracauer, S. (1995) The mass ornament: Weimar essays. Translated by Levin, T.Y. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Family secrets by Annette Kuhn is partly an autobiography and partly an extended essay on memory and how memory supports out understanding of both our own lives and the historical context that we live in.   Kuhn describes it as a book that has sprung from the genre of ‘revisionist autobiography’ (p.147) and points out that any autobiography is ‘inevitably the outcome of a considerable reworking of the raw materials of an identity and a life story’ (p.149).

I found this book in parts fascinating, in parts heart- breaking and partly terrifying. The later was because it managed to bring back so many memories of my own past. I was born only a few years later than Kuhn and brought up in an upper working-class family (my father owned a butcher’s shop). Unlike Kuhn’s, my mother was very pushy and was desperate for me to go to university. In retrospect I think this was because she had missed out the opportunity of doing so because of the war. My mother was German, living in the USA, and repatriated to Germany during the war and, I think, resented the missed opportunities. My father died when I was young, my mother worked hard to keep the family running, and eventually married my stepfather, who, by coincidence, was a professional photographer.

Mother

Me

Mother and me at similar ages!

I took multiple notes, and these led on to other thoughts, and I will attempt to summarise them:

• ‘Telling stories about the past, our past, is a key moment in the making of ourselves’ (p.2) – but how much do we tell, how much do we hide, and how much do we really remember? All families have secrets, and many are similar to those in other families – mine as much as Kuhn’s.
• ‘The past is gone forever’ (p.4) – what traces remain. Looking for them in your memory is like archeology, making a story from small fragments. Different readings of the fragments may lead to a different story.
• The past is not single – the historical context informs your memory, as much as it informs what actually happened. WWII had a major impact on my past. Much of it was hidden as my mother was concerned about the stigma of being German. Much we only learnt from her in the very last months of her life.
• Memory work can start from a single piece of information, a single photo found at the bottom of a box, or a hidden letter. This evokes emotions, uses the intellect and may become part of the truth – at least your truth. A photograph can be interpreted, it gives information about the person, the place, who took the image, who was missed out and why it was taken. The clothes talk about the social aspects. The event may be recalled – although, if many years ago, one may question the accuracy. If the image has been looked at and discussed many times, each time the story might have changed. There is no single, final story.
• Family albums tell a more complex story, partly mediated by the order the images are shown in. My album is random – the pictures are not in any historical order – just the one I acquired them in. I also have boxes (multiple) of unsorted and unlabelled photos – the order I sort them into may change the story. Which ones get priority? And why? Looking at these images is like looking at a box of jigsaw pieces, without the picture!
• ‘This past-in-the-future, nostalgia-in-prospect’ (p.23) – makes you want to produce a ‘good’ story of the ‘ideal family’ – even if it isn’t quite right. Is the truth what you remember or what actually happened? Or what makes you feel good about the time?
• How does culture effect what you take from images? What about the films you have watched as a child? How do you reconcile what you felt then with what you see when analysing them as an adult? What about the books you have read? Your reaction as a child may have been (probably was) mainly emotional – does this have validity in a critical response to a film or book as an adult concerned with theory? Will it make for a wider understanding – or does it cloud the issue?
• Any given photo will hold multiple meanings, for different people, at different times and in different social contexts. It may be specific to a family – but also generic to the culture – the hyper-cute baby photo, smiling up at you, it’s your baby, it’s you as a child, it’s the picture that advertises the photographer’s studio, its something to embarrass your son with to his girlfriend. It’s a memory of a time that will never be repeated.
• Are the main images in your library just of the child, just of the adults or groups? And why? What does this say about family relationships? I have very few of me with my parents but several of mum with her family. Why? Was I not there? Were photos saved for the ‘special occasions’ – family visiting from abroad. A very different situation from the multiple images taken nowadays – but will they still be around in 50 years from now?
• Photos were often taken in best clothes, dressed-up, in uniform – to show pride? A credit to the mother ‘an end in itself’ (p.62). Or in a cute setting, an important place – “look where we have been”. Does the clothing and the dressing-up tell more about the dresser (usually the mother) then the person? What does it say about the family relationships?
• Photos may be taken to mark a special occasion – the image then brings back memories of the occasion – not just the photo, both the local – we were in the pub, Aunty Mary’s house, the garden, – with Sam, Jane, that odd person from down the street – when the Queen was married, the Two Towers blown up or England won the World Cup. Moving from the specific and local to the actual event. Especially relevant when marking global celebrations.
• The image tells about the relationship between the photographer, the person photographed and the person the image is for. Why does the child look uncomfortable? What was the parent expecting by dressing them like that? How subtle is the rebellion?
• Popular memory of shared events – can be provoked by images of the time, celebrations, national and local. People’s memory of a major event is often surprising similar – but may focus on the specific – where they were at the time before the actual event is brought into focus.
• Changing places, homes, schools, countries has an effect on not only where you are but who you are and how you interact with others. it’s a way of changing your social background – but you may never fit in totally. Not everyone can be a chameleon! Roots are important and abandoning them can/does lead to feelings of insecurity. You can ‘For survivals sake you can….learn to keep quiet about what really matters to you……but you risk forgetting the value of those ‘resources of generations gone before’ that might still be there inside you, your resilience , your courage’ (p.116).
• School has an impact on what you do – not only then but much later on. Like Kuhn I was streamed into the ‘academic’ side, in my case science. I remember being told ‘It’s no point you doing art, you’re too clever, and anyway you can’t draw” – the latter comment was possibly true, but there was no consideration that other forms of art might exist, or that I might benefit from engaging with them. In spite of taking pictures all my life, it wasn’t until I was much older (in my 50’s) that I started ‘making art’.
• Why do images from the past, that we are not directly involved with effect us so much? Kuhn gives the example of the St. Pauls’s picture in the London blitz. I can think of ones from the Africa corp in WWII. How does the collective memory that these invoke impact on personal memory? And vice versa?
• Remembering, looking back, allows for changes. Memory can be sparked by other people’s pictures, paintings, music and writing. Anything can be used as a basis for memory work and allow you to make sense of what you see. Other pieces are very private and particular to you (Barthes’s picture of his mother as a child), an image I have just found of my grandmother who I never knew.
• All this leads to the question – how much of memory is imagination?
• Photographs can be used as groundwork – but they may still tell lies, partial truths – but rarely the whole truth. They lead to a ‘constant reworking of memory and identity (p.154). The act/activity (remember it is an ongoing process) is not neutral. There is always ‘secondary revision’. New stories can be told. Things can be healed. Lives can be changed.

This whole book is well worth reading (and re-reading). Maybe it spoke so much to me because I have a similar background – but the lessons learned are valid for everyone.

Reference:

Kuhn, A. (2002). Family secrets: acts of memory and imagination. London; New York: Verso.

I have just finished reading (and taking extensive notes on) The Theatre of the Face by Max Kozloff. It is one of them suggested course books for IAP and talks extensively about photographic portraiture in the 20^th Century (just overlapping into the 21^st).  It is a heavy book, in both senses of the word, but I found it both interesting and enlightening. He introduced me  to a range of photographers that I had not come across previously, and I found his thought on much of the sub-genres provoking. The last chapter particularly talks about how there has been a change in the use of photography in portraiture. In some cases people make an effort to show the ‘why’ of a person and in others they seem to make the image so deadpan (although he does nor use this word)  that, while they are looking for objectivity, Kozloff clearly feels they fail to say anything about the person. He uses images from Ruff to illustrate this. He also talks about the genre of artists who make themselves up as someone else, either to play out a historical painting (Morimura) or to tell a story (Sherman and Nikki S. Lee).

Interestingly, while looking for images for this post, I came across this image by Morimura. What does it mean when one person makes an image that riffs of another’s image which is already a fantasy?

I am not going to try and summarise 317 pages of words and images here, as I have already made notes –Notes and thoughts from The Theatre of the Face. His final paragraph sums up his whole book,  ‘Still regardless of their social status, we understand most subjects to be individuals who have struck a pose – some ones or no bodies on a stage, be it literal or metaphorical. Portraiture illuminates the stage and fixes some little trace of our brief performance. Looking through portrait archives, we learn how much our joint good will, and therefore our wellbeing, is dependent on appearances. At the same time, appearances excite us by the mystery of individuals, who assume that they will be taken at face value. Here is a quandary that, happily or not, must keep us guessing. From one charnel era to the next, the quandary endures, insinuating its challenge, as much when the individual is known as nameless.’ (Kozloff, 2007, p.317).

Reference:

Kozloff, M. (2007). The Theatre of the Face: Portrait Photography since 1900. London: Phaidon, p.317.

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Introduction:

• The face is where we are – Jonathan Miller
• Face is active even in repose
• Portrait photography = frozen moments
• Modern communication has changed the static viewpoint, fixed by class and race of the Victorian times, laced by expectations of propriety to impulsive/nosey vision
• But still a question about what you can learn from a single instant, an isolated moment
• In photography the power is divided between the sitter and the photographer, but exactly what will be caught is unknown
• And how does candid imagery fit in?
• Nowadays photographers bring their own thoughts into the images
• Self-portraits allow for all possibilities, masquerades, theatre, gender changes
• Portraits tell stories, even/especially in social reform pictures
• Some show stereotypes, others get beneath them
• Portraits show mortality and memory

Early 20^th Century

• Major changes
• Wars and riots, civil unrest, mass movement of people
• Changes in technology, international exhibitions, mass production
• Marxism, suffrage, the middle class
• Loss of euro centricity in the arts, Freud, the id and the ego
• The camera became user friendly and available
• Often middle class

• Pictures to record customs eg Benjamin Stone, role-players, showing what is soon to be past
• Pictures to record different cultures (although how real they were is questionable)
• Tableau’s were staged, for political reasons or to show the world how good things were eg Francis Benjamin Johnston
• The image of the exotic other
• Curtis and the Native American peoples, recording a way of life, but? alienating it. Pictorialist images, soft focus, but how real were the images
• Chambi taking pictures of own culture, often with odd captures, the female bullfighter, the smoker in the graveyard
• Casasola takes news images, social documentary, pictures of dictators, new things!
• Hine’s images of immigrants, child workers, faces of the children, a clear bond with the subjects, a liberal idealist, empathetic
• Storyville images of prostitutes, unpolished, background showing, sad but appealing, surprisingly warm
• Development of the culture of the celebrity, things previously private became public
• Pictorialists made images more idealised and poetical, the sitters looked ethereal, other worldly, used soft focus to give symbolist ideas.
• Stieglitz took mainly images of friends, used natural light, showed melancholy, lyrical nature, careful positioning, women especially beautiful, looked for their essence, studied their faces, looked for a timeless moment

Introversion of the Self

• I worry about who I am, therefore, I guess, I am (William Ian Miller)
• Development of the photobooth – what do people think about seeing a photo of themselves. immediately – pre selfie age, make faces. Pretend to be someone else, very different from commissioned portraits, fun? Silly? Tend to be stereotypical, not self-reflective
• Artists try to explore their inner self, often wary, haunted eg Egon Schiele 9 self portraits
• Use of caricature, human face blending with animal,
• Futurists – aimed at shattering perceptions of time and space, multi-layering of images, and use of multiple reflections, disruption of time
• Multiple images taken involving mirrors, reflections and the camera in the image eg Ilse Bing, how important is the sitter, or does the camera and mirror hold more importance?
• Self portraits can be voyeuristic – who are they meant for – the artist or the viewer? You can pretend to be anyone, anything, any gender. Infinite possibilities of exploration
• What is then true? everybody has a range of personalities depending on situation Many artists choose to change their name. Does that mean the person also changes?
• Claude Cahun, multiple guises, deadpan faces, tell little about her life or the real person
• What is self-portraiture then? anxiety, fear, narcissism? an escape from ‘real’ life? A courageous act?

Shades of Valour: development of irony, and where it might be successfully used

• Propaganda- use of images to say what you want others to hear – an icy instrument whose influence is pathological, truth becomes hostage to the powers (Ellul)
• Images of humans came to be personified by an ideology – if the cause was social justice – a deprived individual must look worthy of it. – led to the common man v. The confident leader
• Led to archetypes of race and class eg migrant mother and Churchill
• Development of magazines – picture post, Life etc with often paparazzi images, taken ta least semi covertly
• Portraits were often taken to represent the environment eg underworld, agrarian poverty, demonstrations by the people (Capa)
• Confident stance, taken from lower down – chin juts
• Early documentation of the people in conflicts – eg Spanish civil war (again Capa)
• Street image s- Cartier-Bresson, also Doisneau- both very different CB – upper class and travelling randomly, Doiseau – working class and identified with his subjects- shared values
• Also other views of Paris – Brassai – vagrants and underworld, people interacted with him, not the candid images they sometimes appear to be
• Brandt does similar thing in Britain – images are almost tactile, studies contemporary English mores (1930’s) , he had an interesting what he found in the slums – although was upper class himself.
• Vishniac – images of the Jews in their communities just before the Nazi pogroms, empathetic to his own people – despair
• Same time as image taken by the FSA – but different ideals – deprived yes, but still part of America, no money a different type of despair (Walker Evans, Ben Shahn) took images of people but also objects and places – looking at societal needs
• Miyatake – took pictures in Japanese interment camps, children and teenagers carrying out same rituals as the Americans outside
• Walker Evans took hi subway images – circumspect images, from a man who was anti-corporate
• Weegee was not circumspect took pictures wherever he saw them exposed human nature, underworld and glamour of crime – sensationalism .
• A time of worry! Painted on the faces across USA and Europe- harsh reality or a film set, or both
• Development of fans clubs around the idols of the time, a polished illusion, a fantasy,
• Fashion images also increasing, excelled with graphic design, appealed to the middle classes while in reality only affordable by the upper class, a charade as the models themselves were not important only their ability to show off the clothes (Beaton an exception as showed the person as well) – ‘camp’

The Sander Effect

• The relationship between the portraitist and the sitter is not intimate (usually). The sitter is human material. The sitter is shapes and patterns as well as a person. Formal portraiture acts to animate the sitter and there is a risk involved.
• Viewers look for stories and become bored if there is nothing
• Early small-town portrait studios – the photographer was a craftsman and understood the social background of his subjects, they are respectful, and people dress their best for them
• Many photos taken simply as records- or to send to men overseas, factual, minimal posing, but how were the photographers involved – some distant some part of the society and this would later the tone of the images
• Sander! Interested in the condition of the sitter, rather than their emotional life. The type of the person, representations rather than individuals. All classes and sexes were treated the same. The classes are shown by their clothes and accoutrements, beautifully detailed. He takes them as they are, without encouraging any change.
• Penn – Indians in Cusco – much more sensuous, looked for decorative people. Mixed fashion, minimalism and still -life together. Not really looking at the individuals, or even the realities of their society. Different when he was taking famous figures – allowed them their individuality.
• Avedon– increasingly theatrical (good taste didn’t matter). Fame was important. Larger than life. Not kind! Many of his portraits imply mental illness – or seem to. In old age portraits he shows every wrinkle. People of the American west – shows judgement and squalor.
• Arbus – ‘all families are creepy in a way’ , her proposal for her Guggenheim Fellowship talked about ‘A Study of American Rites, Manners and Customs’ and described all the things that would be of interest in a small town – but that was certainly not how she took them! An introspective reporter – if open can be both. The families all slightly off kilter, the loners who are all rather odd. Her images of the disabled are usually surprisingly kind, unlike those of the ‘normals’– where she would strip away their pretences. Leading to her ‘uncomfortable sense of wonder’. Consider R.D. Laing – normal=alienation, unconsciousness.
• Sander’s work informed that of Arbus and Avedon – but was dissimilar in that they took on board psychological readings of the people not just their work.

Insiders and their Cultures:

• Portraits always local – of their time and space with cultural markers
• Cold War allowed the possibility of crossing boundaries and showing that stereotypes should be questioned
• Reportage/news showed disaster areas, but other photographers looked at more confined/personal images looking at faith, ethnicity, class etc
• Images of suburbia (Bill Owens) and less well-off areas (Martin Parr/Daniel Meadows)
• Are you a participant in the ‘rite’s or an observer? Insider or not? Neal Slavin – American – looking at British (actually English) social groups – but all looked at ‘normal’ activities
• Where does carnival fit in – Cristina Garcia Rodero with images of occult/quasi- religious practices in Spain.
• Mexican images that cross between religion and ethnicity. Graciela Iturbide flouting taboos (Magnolia). Two different classes (for want of a better word) spread across the generations
• Disaster images – compassion fatigue – Salgado and his work on refugees and economic migrants, the tribulation of communities – beautification of tragedy – but why assume poor photographs are any better?
• Joseph Koudelka and gypsies – he was at home with them but does not glamourise them, personal images not a study of ethnographics, becomes an insider
• Brenner on the Jewish diaspora, same religion but looked at them from the outside
• Shelby Lee Adams – Appalachian Portraits – dark, ? Virulent – how well does he know them – Similar to Arbus images – but very different as more prepared and less instinctive.
• How do you show madness – Erdinger with fear, Fellini out of? love
• Privilege and the rich – again – how to show it? Refined, gay abandon, riches everywhere?
• Family albums, stories told from Nan Goldin on. Verene with his extended visual diary of his family and friends

Celebrities to nonentities

• In 80’s change of portraiture to look not just at who and where, but also why and to use a degree of imagination to show this
• Construction of contradictions such as Groves reworking of the migrant mother image
• Role of photoshop and unnatural smoothing of skin, equivalent to use of plastic surgery
• Reworking of previous images and paintings – often including the artist themselves. Why? Looking at issues of race etc or need for notoriety? Morimura
• Warhol’s images, tragedy or show biz? Detached or degraded? Objectification of people and images. Flesh that does not create desire.
• Mapplethorpe different – he does show desire, craftsmanship, also consider Hujar and Candy Darling
• Showing changes in body, whether real or imagined, using themselves as the canvas, looking at alter egos (Duane Michals). Images of approaching death, or even post-mortem. What is the role of religion especially Catholic in these images? Or more in the thoughts of the photographers?
• What is the involvement of the ego? Samaras? A voyeur? Acting and mimicry -? Cindy Sherman whose photos do not allude to her own persona – an actress
• What about when the portrait is of someone unknown- Boltanski – what does that make us feel? Photo is an agent of memory – but that is only true when we know what we are memorising.?
• What about mixed faces – Nancy Burson – doesn’t give as much as a single image, that face is diluted, vaguely familiar
• Late 20^th c – constructed faces and people – don’t feel real
• Blank – forward facing images, Ruff, Dijkstra, – look for total objectivity, but what. If anything, does that say about the person? No personal relationship.
• DiCorcia – more involved, Baroque

The mystery of individuals

Reference

Kozloff, M. (2007). The Theatre of the Face : Portrait Photography since 1900. London: Phaidon.