Photographs that carry and change memory

 Through taking this class, I have become quite interested in how photographs can transmit, perpetuate, and change collective memory over time. Photography as a medium of “truth telling” and expression has changed much since its invention in the early to mid 19^th Century. The changes in technology (i.e. capturing, processing, and printing techniques) have often also changed the way in which photographs carry and convey memory in a culture. For example, we often think of the American Civil War in the black and white or sepia-tones of the daguerreotypes or tintypes that Civil War soldiers or battles were photographed in. This can cause the Civil War to seem somewhat distant to modern viewers who are used to crisp color images. These photographs form our cultural memory of this war and can alter it’s meaning from its original meaning. The American Civil War was the first instance where a war was photographed (as the technology that made photography accessible to be used on a large scale had only recently come into existence), and this made our memory of the war different than any memory of war in the past. Our cultural memory of war before the American Civil War had been influenced mostly by paintings, which usually depicted “glorious” battles or generals in full military uniforms. This was, of course, far from the brutal realities of war. The photographs of the American Civil War, on the other hand, showed thousands of dead and bloated bodies strewn across battlefields. They showed the smoke of battles, amputated limbs, and blood. This made the horror of the war more real to Americans. One effect of this was that the meaning of the Civil War changed from a war fought over Slavery that the Union had succeeded in winning to an awful war where many people died in agony. A positive affect of this change was that war was starting to be seen much more for the horrible reality that it is. Nevertheless, a not so positive affect was that the meaning of the war, being initially fought to save the Union but fought more toward the end (after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation) to end Slavery in the United States to a pointless war of suffering and death. Therefore, the role of Slavery in causing the war in the first place was relegated to only a minor narrative in subsequent memory. Some historians have even argued that this shifting memory of the Civil War made it harder for African-Americans to realize many of the advantages of freedom after the war as well as one of the reasons that is was almost 100 years after the war before the African-American Civil Rights Movement began in earnest (Stampp).

            Another example of how changing photographic technology can alter collective memory is a personal one, though I suspect that it may be true for others of my generation or younger. This is the depiction of cities such as New York, London, Chicago and others from the 1960s and 1970s. I am fascinated by the photographs of 1970s New York City and London for their grit, grime, and personality, and the fact that the photographs are often in black and white or in color that is very different from the color photographs of today. These photographs make that time not only seem more distant but more exotic and interesting. The way that the subways look, the people, the dirt, graffiti, and grime in the sort of strange off color makes the time seem fascinating to me and I suspect to others or my generation. I also suspect that people who lived through the 1960s and 1970s in New York, London, or Chicago, for instance, have a less nostalgic or at least rosy view of that time because of the high crime in those cities during that time. This is yet another example of how photographs carry memory in a somewhat distorted form. This distortion, nevertheless, is what makes memory different then pure history.

            The fact that photographs carry, change, and reassert memory in a culture is why we, as archivists, or librarians should never ignore our collections of photographs. It is often the photographs that carry the more powerful and visceral records of the past for people. It is also important to remember, as students of history to realize the way memory is carried on and sometimes distorted by photographs.

Bibliography:

1. Kenneth M. Stampp, The Causes of the Civil War (New York, Simon & Shuster, 1991).

2. Picturing US History: http://picturinghistory.gc.cuny.edu/?p=1027. Accessed December 2-11, 2013