Exercise 3.6 - "The Memory of the Photograph"
We are asked to read David Bate's essay "The Memory of the Photograph"; to read the text closely, noting Bate’s key points in your learning log, and extending
your research to points that he references which are of interest to you.
Unfortunately the OCA link takes me to a Spanish website and the article is not there. I have however found it here:
I hope this also helps any other student looking for this essay
I feel the key point within David Bate's essay is the question how does photography contribute to memory as an auxiliary function to both individual memory and to collective memory. Also that it can be subjected to incorrect recording and interpretation, distorted recording or even withheld. The latter in terms of human memory I could connect to suppressed memory and other memory that may eventually be stored electronically and also be withheld in some way
Bate quotes Freud:
"If I distrust my memory – neurotics, as we know, do so to a remarkable extent, but normal people have every reason for doing so as well – I am able to supplement and guarantee its working by making a note in writing. In that case the surface upon which this note is preserved, the pocket-book or sheet of paper, is as it were a materialized portion of my mnemic apparatus, which I otherwise carry about with me invisibly. I have only to bear in mind the place where this “memory” has been deposited and I can then “reproduce” it at any time I like, with the certainty that it will have remained unaltered and so have escaped the possible distortions to which it might have been subjected in my actual memory."
Freud confirms there are several options to support natural memory and Bate again quotes Freud:
"If I distrust my memory – neurotics, as we know, do so to a remarkable extent, but normal people have every reason for doing so as well – I am able to supplement and guarantee its working by making a note in writing. In that case the surface upon which this note is preserved, the pocket-book or sheet of paper, is as it were a materialized portion of my mnemic apparatus, which I otherwise carry about with me invisibly. I have only to bear in mind the place where this “memory” has been deposited and I can then “reproduce” it at any time I like, with the certainty that it will have remained unaltered and so have escaped the possible distortions to which it might have been subjected in my actual memory."
Bate quotes:
"Kracauer's work is less familiar, especially his posthumously published work on History, where he compares photography (and film) to the work of historiography: these practices all have historical narrative as a common denominator, he argues, which bonds their respective aims together "
So Bate is recognising that photography is aid just like note making to recording memories but I think he hints recorded memories can be false, misinterpreted and elements with held for whatever reason just in the same way human recorded memories can be
Bate observes:
"One of the striking points that Jacques Derrida makes in Archive Fever is that an archive is not a question of the past, of “dealing with the past that might already be at our disposal or not at our disposal, an archival concept of the archive”. Rather, “It is a question of the future, the question of the future itself, the question of a response, a promise and of a responsibility for tomorrow”
This I interpret to mean the responsibility to record now for future recollection
"Photographs are one of the most important technological inventions for Jacques Le Goff because photography is the machine that industrializes visual memory." Bate confirms but I believe the human memory is multi dimensional and sounds, smells and emotions are also recorded within the human brain. a photograph may only jog them visually
While Bate peruses the Photograph Trafalgar Square by Talbot he muses "so too are memories subject to the same procedures, like mis-remembering" we know humans can share share entirely different memories of the same event for different reasons. The photograph, whilst its content can be hard to challenge the selection of what information is bound within the image frame can itself be a misinterpretation, a different memory of the event.
I the Bate sums this up nicely at the end "With photographs, memory is both fixed and fluid: social and personal. There is nothing neutral here. As sites of memory, photographic images (whether digital or analogue) offer not a view on history but, as mnemic devices, are perceptual phenomena upon which a historical representation may be constructed. Social memory is interfered with by photography precisely because of its affective and subjective status. "
This was a challenging read but within it is an interesting theme in associating photographic and human memory as having similar foibles and in my view both affect and impact the other.
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