Photography and cultural memory: a methodological exploration
Top Cited Papers
- 1 December 2007
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Informa UK Limited in Visual Studies
- Vol. 22 (3), 283-292
- https://doi.org/10.1080/14725860701657175
Abstract
Recent years have seen a flowering of research and scholarship on cultural memory across the humanities and social sciences. Among the many facets of this work is a quest to extend and deepen understanding of how personal memory operates in the cultural sphere: its distinguishing features; how, where and when it is produced; how people make use of it in their daily lives; how personal or individual memory connects with shared, public forms of memory; and ultimately, how memory figures in, and even shapes, the social body and social worlds. Personal and family photographs figure importantly in cultural memory, and memory work with photographs offers a particularly productive route to understanding the social and cultural aspects of memory. Beginning with a study of one photograph, this article develops and interrogates a set of interlocking memory work methods for investigating the forms and everyday uses of ‘ordinary photography’ and how these figure in the production of memory.Keywords
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