Shared Moments. Shared Life

Abstract

Traces of the past remain in the present, as raw material in the production of new stories about the past. These stories may heal the wounds of the past. Annette Kuhn. This project investigates the intricate relationship between family and memory through the narratives that define a family’s shared life. These narratives are founded on histories recalled, and visual clues, that are collected, preserved, and shared by the family group. Stories are told and re-told to affirm the family’s unity. Snapshots are taken to support family ideals. Using the family’s tools of storytelling and photography, the researcher's aim is to break apart the conventions that underpin the family’s notions of itself, and to question the nature of truth by exploring the fictionalization of memory through story and photograph. Through a process that Annette Kuhn calls memory work the researcher seeks to create a new understanding of past and present by comparing alternate stories from members of one family. Each member interprets the past and its impact on the present differently. Memory work also aims to undermine the nostalgia that insulates memories of the past as special, irretrievable moments. A family photograph functions as a site of nostalgia. By playing off family photographs against intimate portraiture the researcher hopes to expose the nature of nostalgic representation. The researcher engages both formal and informal presentation to reveal the image’s inability, on its own, to confirm any true sense of the family. How the past is remembered is shaped by our present. The past is more about today than yesterday, and how we tell stories of the past reflects the time between each re-telling. Each time a story is told it is shaped by who is telling the story and who is listening. Within a family the sharing of remembered moments helps to create a sense of identity, outlining the shared life of the family group. We tend to cling to family and childhood stories as stable truths because they form the foundation of who we are. Denying the alterable and interpretative nature of the stories’ source material, memory safeguards that foundation. This project provides pieces of evidence from a larger story in order to challenge conventional notions of family storytelling and faith in memory as access to truth, whilst also building a portrait of a particular family.