Initial Idea’s – Personal photographs exercise.
As an initial exercise to start me thinking about how photography can trigger memory I am going to look at photographs of myself but not any old photographs but ones I think really encapsulate a place in time in my life and looking at the them make me remember a whole lot more than where and when the images were take. I am also going to explain what these memories trigger in me, how they make me feel or if they remind me of how I was feeling at that time that might not be evident from an outsider viewing the photo. All the information I provide about the photographs are just memories triggered by looking at the images not just things I randomly remembering the event.
I remember that this photograph was taken on Halloween 2006 at a club called jumping jacks in Coventry. I remember I felt at the time that i had found it quite hard to fit in when I first got to uni and had struggled to feel I suppose “excepted” in my new circle of friends, that I had been thrust into as they where the people I was living with. But this photograph reminds me that this night felt like a turning point. I had gone out for one of the first times with my new flat mates, was having a brilliant time and finally felt more like I fitted in. I also remember the girl in the photo, Christian (not me) use to call this photo “fairy wars”.
This photo brings back two main memories, rebellion and frankly stupidity. The photo is a picture of my stomach I got my sister to take after id just been and had my hypes pierced. I remember that I was still drunk from the night before so I thought it would be a good idea as I knew some piercers in town, to get them to recommend a piercing and as I already had me belly button done they recommended I had my hypes pierced. When I look at this photo now it makes me remember that teenage rebellion leaves scares long after the piercings have gone and a hole in your wallet.
This photo was taken during a the one of the last gigs I did with an old band of mine called “Inert” back in about 2005, it was the biggest show we’d every played and we somehow managed to fill the main stage room at a place called Eddies no8 (about 6 months before it burnt down) I remember being quite pissed off that night because a girl I really fancied and said she fancied me turned up with her new boy friend who to my knowledge she had chose over me about a week before. I remember strumming my bass so hard
I almost broke the strings and I also remember that before we kicked into one of our song un-binonced
to her I sang a few line of a song on my own aimed at her the lyric where “I got more wit, a better kiss,
a hotter touch, a better fuck than any boy u’ll ever met, sweetie you had me” make me cringe now but at the time I remember it made me feel a whole lot better.
On the surface this look like a pretty ordinary photograph of me in the back of a car looking like a poser-ish twat, in my mates mum channel sunglasses. But looking at this photo it reminds me of I day I had a very strong feeling. I remember I had gone into town to see my girl friend at the time; it was sunny and hot and had been the best summer of my life. I had then meet up with a mate or mine and when cursing in here mums merc. As her dad owned a pizza place her mum got me a takeaway pizza for free and I was crusing around eating pizza in a very nice car the sun was shinning I had a girl friend that I cared a lot about and was having the time of my life and I remember distinctly thinking to my self. “Life couldn’t get much better than this, for the first time in a long time I actually feel truly happy”. I don’t think that a lot and this photo brings back the memory of that happiness at that time in my life.
I believe this photograph was taken by my dad some time around 1988 – 1989. The photo is simply my mum feed me as a baby. I love this photograph I think it’s really beautifully shot. Unlike all the other images I’ve chosen to look at it doesn’t bring back any memories as of course I was too young to remember anything at the time but it is a photo that has preserved a place in time and in my life so well. With out this photo I would have no visual way of remembering what I looked like back then or what my mum looked like in the 1980’s or where we lived at the time.
I still find this photograph hard to look at it was take just before me and my long term girlfriend at the time split up. It brings back quite a few strong feeling; it even makes my stomach go funny looking at it? I remember that at the time I knew things hadn’t been good for a while and I remember feeling that night just how bad things had gotten between us and also that I felt really guilty because I knew I didn’t want to be in the relationship anymore. She kept asking me what was wrong and why I looked so down and didn’t want to join in. I think my face says it all; I can’t even bring myself to look her in the eye.
This image was taken, of me standing on the edge of a cliff in Crete during the summer. It’s a very overly dramatic photo but I had had a hard start to my summer a lot of shit had gone on and I had spent a lot of time dwelling on it. But looking at this image and the feeling I got at the time I just realised how insignificant all the stuff I had be dwelling on was in the grand scheme of things the fares “fuck it” springs to mind.
This is the newest image that I am going to look at. Weirdly for me this image sums up a feeling I remember at the time quite visually. Coming back to uni for my final year felt like a fresh start, lots of things had changed and I moved into a house full of people I had never even meet before. This reminds me of the feeling I felt at the time which was one of relief that things hadn’t turned out as bad as I thought they might and quite literally I still managed to hold onto my old friends (in the form of Adam on the right) but at the same time I had managed to make new friends (in the form of Kristy, Gemma and Rachel on the left).
In conclusion what I have found from doing this is that photography is a brilliant form of memory jogging if you will, I can’t believe how much detail I can remember about a time or an event just by looking back at a still two dimensional image. Doing this has also proven to me that I think photography is the right medium to be working in. but something I hand anticipated as much along with the amount of detail I could go into was the range of emotions these images and memories caused, just whilst doing this exercise iv felt happy, sad, nostalgic, sick, empowered, angry, shock, relief just to name a few. This feeling of emotion towards an image is something I would like to explore further it might explain why photographs are so memorable.
