Week 15: Words and Images

During their conversation Sally Mann went slightly off track the original question and talked about how the photographs overwhelmed her memory of the scene. She talked about how she first remembers the photo she took rather than the reality of the scene that was happening when she took the photo. She then continued to talk about looking back at the memory and pushing past the memory of the photograph and writing about the actual scene. I can strongly relate to some of what she said. Most of my life is lived behind a camera these days. Many of my memories are documented and photographed, so my first thought with a lot of my memories are the photos rather than the actual memory. I take so many pictures that it's almost like making a stop motion movie of my life. However, I disagree with the image corrupting my memory of what happened. For me it’s as though I can see the picture freezing a bit of history and when I look at the picture, it unfreezes and I can watch the memory replay. This applies regardless of the type of picture it was. Whether it was a personal memory I wanted to remember or a photo that I had to set up and fix lighting and whatnot, or if it was part of some photojournalism work that I have done, I can still remember what was happening around me. I can agree, however, that being behind the camera all the time most likely distorts my memory of what is happening. Because when a camera is taken out the whole dynamic changes. This was actually another thing that they discussed later in the live stream.