Intimate Past & Present Light: Using Photography to Investigate Self-Defining Memories

Abstract

This practice-led research project investigates the relationship between autobiographical memory and photography.

My research question comprises two parts. Firstly, how can I mediate the virtual space between myself, as both the maker and as the subject of my practice, to the viewer? Rather than communicating autobiographical specificity, how to emphasise the malleability of personal memories, using the photographic object as metaphor, so that a viewer may experience some shared nostalgia for the ‘lost’ past. Secondly, to what extent can the separation of self occur, from being ‘fixed’ in a snapshot and ‘semi-fixed’ in memory to being ‘present’ in the studio?

I initiated this project from my preoccupation with self-defining memories of intimate relationships. I began with my ‘self’. These memories provided a means of confronting my research objective: using photography to manipulate them.

This research reflects the need to address through photography the plasticity and transferability of memory’s hold on the present. To do this, I reworked personal snapshots and memories through material and sensory encounter. To help make way for a viewer’s bond to form with my work, I needed to dissolve and rework my bond with personal snapshots and memories. This was key to bridging the intangible space of my past. I produced several series of photographs, contextualised by Endel Tulving’s hypothesis of chronesthesia (mental time travel) and Henri Bergson’s theory of recollection recovery.

Through conception and execution of reworked photographs, I occupied a distinctive space as a maker/subject. This space, which I have termed prepositional space, allowed me to ‘unfix’ self from snapshots and memories to be present in the studio. This makes way for a viewer’s bond to form. I argue that prepositional space is a significant new methodology for artists and viewers to assess their encounter with such photographs.