Tag: Memory

Exercise—Childhood memory

I have chosen to recreate a memory of something that happened to me when I would have been about eight years old. I was with some neighbourhood friends and we were rolling down the sides of the drainage ditch that ran behind our houses. It was late fall, so the ditch was dry and full of grasses and weeds.

I decided to go everyone one better and rolled backwards instead of forwards, only to find myself stuck at the bottom with my feet in the air and the zipper of my jacket stuck to the skin of my throat. Any movement pulled on the zip fastener and cause it to bite deeper into my skin. So I lay there until one of my friends was able to get my dad to come and help me out.

Help is coming

Children get into these sorts of scrapes all the time, but what stayed with me was the sense of how time slowed as I waited and gazed up at the sky through my feet. And the mix of feelings: the zip hurt my neck and I was afraid to move, upside-down and disoriented, a bit panicky but calm and observant all at once. I have since felt that unreal mix at other times of crisis: panic and calm, urgent action and slow motion.

I created this image fairly literally, but these are an adult’s legs and feet, not a child’s. And I believe that the image (and the experience behind it) point to the disorientation we can feel on two levels, both physical and emotional: our world has been turned on its head.

I decided to give the image a title because that has often been my experience—in the midst of disruption, help is coming. It is rare to be completely alone, but the hard part is being patient while waiting.

The photograph does resemble my memory in many physical respects, but the most important part for me is the feelings it summons and the upset perspective one has. I think most viewers, even if they had no sense of the story that gave rise to the image, would recognize that all is not well with the figure who belongs to the legs and feet. If anything, the picture could be seen as a capture of someone who is in the middle of falling, with a blank sky and the hint of a roofline above.

A1—Two Sides of the Story

Most people who give the issue more than a moment’s thought realize that a two-dimensional image does not give us direct access to three-dimensional “reality.” But since a camera contains a light-sensitive surface that is exposed for a specified period, the artifice of an image extends to include a fourth dimension: an often unquestioned perception of time. A camera is a time machine, after all.

A photographer may just have two fundamental controls: “where I stand and when I press the button” (Hurn and Jay, 1997: 25). But although David Hurn is probably being facetious about how simple image-making is, he might have usefully added that another part of the subjectivity the photographer brings to the image is how long to press the button.

We have become very used to photographs freezing time faster than sight allows, but the camera is just as capable of creating exposures that are much longer than what the eye can register. Japanese photographer Hirhoshi Sugimoto has explored this with his series of long-exposures in movie theatres to the point of information overload: his photographic record shows screens that are grossly over-exposed and therefore blank. And Alexey Titarenko’s City of Shadows series on St. Petersburg uses long exposures to capture the blurred movement of people in a dreary black-and-white cityscape (Titarenko and Tchmyreva, 2001). While Titarenko’s shutter is open, crowds leave vapour trails and begin to fade.

David Campany suggests that still images not only prompt our memories but shape how we understand the phenomenon of memory itself: “In popular consciousness (as opposed to popular unconsciousness) the still image continues to be thought of as being more memorable than those that move” (Campany, 2003).

None of the images I have prepared for this assignment is any less “true” than the photographs of frozen motion that we have become used to. In fact, both pictures in each set are artificial and neither reproduces what our eyes see. Both are ‘still’ images, but one is less still and hints at how quickly perception and memory fade.

We have simply become used to the photographic convention of stillness. But it is just one side of the story.

References

Campany, D. “Safety in Numbness: Some remarks on the problems of ‘Late Photography’’’ (2003) At: https://davidcampany.com/safety-in-numbness/ (Accessed on 14 July 2019)

Hurn, D. and Jay, B. (1997) On being a photographer: a practical guide. Portland, Oregon: Lenswork Publishing.

Theaters — Hiroshi Sugimoto (s.d.) At: https://www.sugimotohiroshi.com/new-page-7 (Accessed on 14 July 2019)

Titarenko, A. and Tchmyreva, I. (2001) City of shadows. St. Petersburg, Russia: APT Tema.