Photographic Memories


A project by Mark Selby.


Photographs can act as powerful mnemonic representations of our personal memories, indicative of time, place and experience. However as digital photographic technologies strive for ease, convenience and instantaneity, photographs are mass–produced. The camera democratizes experience, recording differing experiences in identical ways. Often not valued as memories, photographs become mundane representations of unremarkable and unfamiliar events whose mnemonic value is increasingly diluted.
Photographic Memories is an ongoing project that intends to make photography an integral component of experience. Like the map, or the ticket, the camera becomes necessary to the journey. Here photography encourages the experience of travel, capturing it in ways more appropriate to the activity.
Oct 01
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Exert from Brief

“The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature”
Vanevar Bush - As we may Think (1945).

Labour saving technologies offer convenience, but simultaneously remove the satisfaction of overcoming problems and difficulties.
If an activity requires more effort, is it ultimately a more significant and satisfying experience?

What I propose here is not simply to make the capture, storage and display of images less convenient, (why not just use an old camera?) but to use the photographic process in order to question why we want to record an event in the first place, with a view to affecting a move away from homogenous commodity and toward inducing more challenging, but creative photographic practices in order for a user to produce more emotionally significant ‘memories’.