Hello, if you are revisiting my website for the first time in quite a long time.
I haven’t posted for a quite a while. Although, on this day, as we move toward the coming of 2025, it is that I feel motivated now, to share some of my thoughts on the topic of photography, and its connection to the way by which we remember events, that have already unfolded in our lives (a personal post amongst a small number within the blog section of this site).
Memory as a process, might be something that we take for granted, when it comes to knowing what we know and understanding who we are. Seeing a photograph, or image or other, might too be the method that we automatically take for granted, as a means for accessing truth, or remembering an event in time that has passed us by. Yet, as I have thought about the way that our minds receive imagery and information, and as I have more lately paid close attention to the way I process information as well, the realization that photography, and its placement, can trick us out of seeing the truth, as much as it can tell us the truth, has been placed before me.
Which as a subheading, to understanding memory, might be one that any of my former university photography tutors, would have relished in supporting me with, should I have chosen this for my dissertation, instead of writing about photography and its links to narcissism. Yet, back in those days, I would have to say that, although I had access to all the resources in the world, as I popped off to the Louvre in Paris one day, or on the next, to the Tate modern in London, understanding memory or questioning it, wasn’t something that I’d felt particularly drawn to study or focus on. As I suppose you could say, that I thought that I already knew it all. And felt sure, that my experiences had been as I remembered. That is, until much later on, when I had come to understand that they had been quite something else.
A small extract on a case study on myself and memory, titled, ‘the children with the red doll’, is below.
The children with the red doll.
It was 26th December 2024, and I was looking through some old family photographs of myself as a child. There were lots. There’d always been lots, and they’d always been there. The ones of the old cottage close to the castle, where we lived, were the prettiest you might say. See the photo of the listed window that framed the seasons as they changed above. The snow upon the landscape is perhaps one of the most memorable.
A picture of myself in fancy dress was taken on a day, when I was probably 3 or 4. Because we moved when I was five or so, and I looked too old to be 2, so it must have been around then.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
In the photo we are playing dressing up. Cowboys and posh lady by the looks of it. I am wearing a wide brimmed hat, fur shawl, gloves and tartan skirt. The bright red soft body doll is in all three photos’ as well, with it’s face turned away.
In the first photo (figure 1), I am alone. My jumper is different.
In the second photo, figure 2, there’s the girl with brown hair, and a fringe. She has my clothes on, and my hat, and she is holding my bright red doll, and is even wearing the tartan skirt. She is stood in the same position, as myself in figure 3. Figure 2 and 3 were taken on the same day, with the same things in the background, in the same place, with the same weather. But I had noticed, some time ago, that the girl in figure 2, was not me.
It was however, always taken to be, that, it was me, in all three of the pictures. As in figure 2 and 3, we are stood together in the same position. In the same room. With the same things. In the same clothes, and holding the same red doll. But the girl in figure 2 is not me.
On the 26th December 2024, I compared the photo’s, and memories surrounding the events of the day, unravelled, like a ball of string being rolling across the floor.
Please add your comments below, and thanks for reading.
Happy new year.
In addition to the above, I have added an image, as a little piece of local history, about the estate that I grew up on, during my early years. Published some time in the olden days.
