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 19
My friend Arthur had an old Polaroid Land camera. Read the instructions on the metal plate… at this point of the project this method of developing the film really appealed to me. It asks the photographer to work for the picture - there is no instant or automatic result. If digital photography asked for more in-put from the photographer would the effects of mass-production on the emotional value of photographs be remedied?
