The Issue of the Family Photo Album

After reading “History, Memory, and the Family Album” by Patricia Holland, I am undecided on my interpretation of a photograph and its role as a part of history, memory, and a person’s existence. Holland has built a strong argument to suggest that photographs are a superficial form of memory and are inaccurate or incomplete accounts of the past. I continually found myself agreeing with her statements, but there was always a thought in the back of my mind, asking what the purpose of a family photograph really is. She proves that the family album portrays a certain “deceptive innocence” (1) by using examples like the photograph of the smiling children at a birthday party (taken hours after the birthday girl’s temper tantrum) to claim that photographs simply “project the appropriate emotions” (2). I have to agree with Holland, as it’s easy to look at my own photographs and see (or not see) the true story behind a photograph. A simple example of this that I see everyday is a framed photo of me and one of my best friends. That night we ended up getting in a stupid fight, but I like the picture of the two of us so I have it framed. I don’t have the picture framed to remember that night, and I don’t think of that night when I look at the picture. I have that picture framed because it reminds me of the two of us, and other memories that I have with her. I’ve separated the photo from what it is technically documenting, which is in a way manipulating my memories. However, that’s a memory that I’ve chosen to forget, with or without the photograph. Every person chooses to remember some things and forget others. This is not to say that we are able to choose everything we forget because we aren’t able to retain all memories. In this respect, photographs are helpful for triggering memories that we want to remember.
I can see why it is ‘wrong’ to manipulate our memories by keeping photographs that do not properly represent a certain experience or relationship. However, I can also see the benefits of being able to forget certain things. Holland states that “family albums are about forgetting as well as remembering” (9), which I can see as being a positive characteristic. Humans will try to shut out bad memories or traumatic experiences from their subconscious, so why shouldn’t they be able to do this in a more deliberate fashion as well? I’m not at all suggesting that we should condone practices as drastic as the memory erasing ‘treatments’ of Lacuna Inc. in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, but I do feel that memory is a personal choice. Furthermore, it’s a choice that we will make subconsciously, so I don’t see the harm in using photographs to act as a tangible representation of a person’s memory (as long as the photo album remains a personal item).
The family photo album shapes your perception of family, which is supposed to be the centre of “romantic social fantasy” (5). This is an ideological belief that provides a sense of comfort to most people. From this respect, photographs that convey the happy memories and loving relationships should be considered to be morally ‘considerate’. A photograph is a documentation of the past, which makes it a form of remembrance for a person’s life. In this way, I think photographs are comparable to a eulogy. This may be simplifying the issue, but after a person’s death, we wish to remember the positive elements of that person and the positive experiences, or memories, that we have with that person. In the most primitive sense, humans don’t want to remember the bad events in their past, especially in the family setting because it is supposed to be a loving and comforting institution. I realize that this stance is very one-sided and I am basing my stance on the assumption that viewing photographs remains a personal experience, but this was the general argument that I kept getting drawn back to while reading the Holland article.
Holland summarizes the issue of the family photograph by contrasting the “difference between an antique shop past, with its smell of new wax polish accompanying fading prints in dark wooden frames, and one’s own past, with its ambivalent and uneasy memories” (13). This comparison suggests that photographs are able to portray the past how we want to see it, without all of the sad or embarrassing family stories or even without certain family members. There is a certain homogenization of the photographs that creates an image of the past that is similar to what is presented in an antique store, with all of the useless or unattractive objects from the past discarded.
As I have stated, I think it’s perfectly acceptable to shape your choice of memory through photographs, on a personal level. However, photographs transcend the private life into the public spectrum because of their medium. When photographs become a public entity, the misconstrued past becomes less acceptable and more detrimental. Holland explains this idea well when she considers the ‘folklorisation’ of different cultures and communities. She explains that certain stereotypes are created for cultures like the “Scottishness of Scotland” or the “ruggedness of the Cornish fishing villages” (13), which people will strive to capture in photographs on family trips. It is dangerous when a certain idea of reality is preconceived and then this incorrect perception is relayed in a photograph.
The issue of the power of a photograph is thoroughly analyzed in Barbara Rosenblum’s article “I have begun the process of dying”. This article explains when and why a photograph should convey more than just a group of smiling faces. As I mentioned before, a photograph lives on as a person’s legacy, as a form of representation when someone is no longer with us.
Rosenblum is dealing with the difficulty of exposing and expressing her life in her last months of living. This creates a new purpose of the photograph, which far surpasses my proposal for its purpose to be the representation of good (or wanted) personal memories. She is searching for a way to use a camera to “capture the feelings, the expressions, the emotions” (241) of her subjective and extremely personal experience. The complexity of this process is outlined well when Rosenblum says: “The camera, by its very nature, demands exposure, that I open to it. Subjectivity, by its nature, demands that I shut everything and everyone out, so I can hear myself” (242). This is why I feel that the personal subjectivity must stand separate from the photograph. The image that a photograph portrays will always remain subjective because it can never be fully explained.
This subjectivity is made particularly apparent when reading Rosenblum’s account of her supportive and devoted relationship with her lover, Sandy. I think most people have seen this form of support and devotion in their own life and can understand that it is something a photograph will never be able to adequately communicate. However, by looking at a photograph of the two people in this loving relationship, an outsider is able to recognize and appreciate the true relationship that the photo symbolizes. This relationship will be interpreted differently by all observers, even by the two people in the photograph.
Basically, to sum up my interpretation of the readings about the family photo album is to say that I am left unsure of my opinion of the family photograph. I don’t know how it’s possible to properly transmit a memory in a photograph. I don’t even know if it’s necessary to properly transmit a memory in a photograph. I feel that a photograph is not able to portray an entire history, which makes it an inadequate means of representation and should not be relied on as heavily as it is for the portrayal of any type of past.