The Anonymous Memory of the Living Past

DOI

10.2991/ssphe-18.2019.47How to use a DOI?

Keywords

photography, archive, memory, Becher, Boltanski

Abstract

This article studies the interaction between photography and archive, in terms of its important role in the contemporary artistic practices of recent decades. The nature of the photographic record allows it to construct historical memory, which underlines its documentary/ archival potential. The method of archiving in photography offers the artists the opportunity to look at the collective history and memory from a different angle, other than the scientific. The problematizing and analysis of the interrelations between the two media, photography and archives, and their specific interaction, specifically discussed in the works of Christian Boltanski and Bernd and Hilla Becher, are key components in the methodology of the study. In the two examples, the photographic subject performs an inversion redefining the boundaries between an image and an object. In this way, constructing / deconstructing the concept of the archive, they challenge or establish it by focusing on a specific fragment of time, with which they discuss the questions of the loss and preservation of historical memory and heritage, from the point of view of their own identity and biographical trace.

Copyright

© 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Lyubomir Krastev
PY  - 2019/01
DA  - 2019/01
TI  - The Anonymous Memory of the Living Past
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Social Science, Public Health and Education (SSPHE 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 196
EP  - 200
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/ssphe-18.2019.47
DO  - 10.2991/ssphe-18.2019.47
ID  - Krastev2019/01
ER  -