On a call with other Photography students when I was asking their opinion about some old album photographs and physical objects such as a brooch, the topic of hauntology came up regarding the ghostly look and feel of some photographs and objects. My blog post of this feedback session is shown at the following link:
https://richarddalgleish.net/2024/04/24/major-project-test-pieces-03-album-images/
I found this idea of hauntology interesting and jotted down a note to myself to do some research into this topic. This document is my first dip into this subject area. My research poses many questions which I will look into further as this seems a very interesting topic.
In earlier research into the liminal, a link to which is shown below, I wrote about the idea of using a sound recording as an example of a technological solution for extending memory. This came from James Joyce’s Ulysses (Langford, 2021, pp. vii–viii) (Joyce, 2017, p. 86).
https://richarddalgleish.net/liminality/
As I wrote in my dissertation, photography is often the solution of choice today when many of us try to aid and extend memories of those we have lost[1]. I note that since COVID-19, many funerals have video feeds for those unable to attend in person, so maybe in the future, still images will be replaced by video recordings with sound and presented as live feeds. I wonder about such technologies: photographs of long-lost relatives or sound recordings with crackles and distortion, which create a sense of the dead but one that is overlaid with emotion. These different technologies are used in an attempt to bridge the liminal threshold. I will recount some details of the recent funeral of a friend just before Christmas so I can easily relate my thoughts of that day. At the funeral, we learnt some of the details of the illness which led to death, reflected on stories of a life well-lived, listened to music and recitations, and saw photographs presented on a monitor and printed on the order of service. At other funerals, we might have seen video clips, or we might have sung if the funeral had been religious. After the official part of the ceremony was complete, we went to a venue to take part in a wake where older forms of communication were used; hugs, words of condolence and retold stories were part of the funerary rite. In the days and months after the funeral, talk shifted to what to do with the things which belonged to the dead person, and questions asked if we would like anything as a memento. Elizabeth Hallam and Jenny Hockey wrote about remembering the dead as part of the “process of dying, mourning and grief.” The objects and experiences which are used to form memories of the dead and to give objects and shared experiences acquired meanings. Interestingly, Hallam and Hockey write of the idea of memory as a “possession” and that we “keep and preserve our memories as if they are objects in a personal museum.” (Hallam and Hockey, 2001, pp. 52–53) As I discussed in my dissertation, the mechanism of codifying and recalling memory means that memories of the dead triggered by things such as photographs are not inert, and the original memory can be overwritten. (Dalgleish, 2023, pp. 6–7) Photographs are said to be liminal objects as they fill a space between the past, as all photographs show the past, yet at the same time, show what will come. Barthes tells us that “Death is the eidos of the photograph” (Barthes, 1981, p. 15) and echoed by Susan Sontag: “Photography is the invention of mortality. A touch of the finger now suffices to invest a moment with a posthumous irony.” (Sontag, 1979, p. 70) This brings me to the concept of hauntology, a term coined by Jacques Derrida (Derrida, 1994, p. 63), which is closely linked with the idea of the liminal. If Barthes tells us that photographs are harbingers of death to come, then hauntology seems to be looking at the other side of this coin, namely that all photographs must show some element of the past and indeed that without that past, the photograph cannot exist. Elements of the past continue to exist in photographs. This idea is tied with that of ghosts. “From the first ‘apparition,’ it’s all about the return of the departed. It is there in black and white, it can be verified after the fact. The spectral is the essence of photography.” (Derrida, 1998, p. vi) I wonder if there is a sense that photographs and sound recordings act differently from retold stories or if these all conjure a sense of the past, opening liminal gateways through which memories step. Is this sense of sorrow linked with loss and melancholy to be expected to appear when we try and deal with that which is dead or absent? Photographs, video, sound recordings and retold stories present us with the opportunity to freeze an aspect of the passing of the dead. We can listen to their voice again, replay the funeral, recall the telling of a story and look again at photographs or videos. Yet Roland Barthes tells us that the photograph does not help us to remember the dead and, in fact, destroys and overwrites memory. (Barthes, 1981, pp. 65–66, 90–91) Barthes speaks of melancholy when listening to the voices of the dead. (Barthes, 1981, pp. 79) At the same time, Barthes writes of the “eidolon’ or the spectre of a person captured in a photograph. (Barthes, 1981, p. 9) Using sound recordings or images to try and preserve an aspect of the dead. Photographs and sounds of those no longer here to speak, sing, or pose in front of the camera lens are part of the experience of loss. Photography is, in itself, a liminal thing. It is a real object we can hold, yet it is also an object which conjures emotion and sits at the gateway to what comes after death. It shows what once was, yet the photograph contains a sign of death to come. (Barthes, 1981, p. 14-15, 96) I have collected many album photographs, which I source online. These have no history beyond what I can see. There might be the odd word or a date or, very rarely, the name of the photographer. Mostly, the photographs stand alone in mute testimony that this person lived at a certain time and place. As many of the photographs are quite old, it is safe to assume the people shown are all dead. I know another student who takes such images and tries to rebuild their story from the faint clues left behind, trying to re-unite the archive with a place, a date and a name. I have never been tempted to do this as it is enough for me to look at the photographs which now belong to me, and to see them as orphans, people with no past and an unknown story. What these images have is a hook that can trigger emotion and the feeling of melancholy that Barthes speaks of. Maybe there is melancholy for the dead, but it also exists for people who have been forgotten and cast adrift. I can imagine the friends and families at funerals, words of loss, tears and all that we associate with funerary rites. How shocked might some have been at a funeral in the past to realise in just a few years, all would be forgotten? This fate awaits all of us. It awaits me, and strangely more upsetting is that this fate awaits my daughter. There will be a time when no one remembers her.
I stated earlier that hauntology linked with pictures from the past and liminality related to looking at the dead in photographs were opposite sides of the same coin. I wonder again if both show fragments of reality or spectres of what once was.
What then of the surviving photograph left for me to add a new story should I choose? The surviving photographs offer the opportunity to think about loss, memory, death, nostalgia and more. The photograph is a device of hauntology which gives impressions of what once was. Rebecca’s photograph can be added to the pile, and that is perhaps a future project that will mix my own sense of loss with that of others. Thinking about Barthes’s description of the Eidolon, I am struck by a description of hauntology by Mark Fisher. He writes specifically about electronic music, although I can see that his meaning expands beyond music. Fisher explores the sense that the development of this music “had been synonymous with a sense of the future”. This time could be thought of as after history or beyond our future. “It meant the acceptance of a situation in which culture would continue without really changing, and where politics was reduced to the administration of an already established (capitalist) system.” Of particular interest to me and my work on liminality related to death and photography is that Fisher argues that the future can be thought of as a kind of haunting that impacts upon the culture of today and implies a period of imitation and a lack of invention. (Fisher, 2012, pp. 16–17) This sense of hauntology echoes the writings of Derrida, who used the word hauntology to conceptualise our repressed past and to explain the sense of failed political futures, such as Soviet Russia or the great promises of the capitalist system. It feels to me that hauntology has a very negative stance. It seems to be used to stop us from forgetting things that have gone wrong and how prominent arguments can suppress newer thoughts. It seems to be tied to a sense of regret. Is this also true of images of our dead and that grief holds back the living and stops us from moving on? Yet this isn’t how I see hauntology. The spectral hint of something beyond life doesn’t have to be based upon regret. Grief has many positive elements, such as the desire to create works of art or writing about loss. I wonder if Fisher’s thoughts on electronic music no longer moving forward is a cyclical argument, and he needs to not be so narrow in what he looks at or, in his case, listens to. Is death, as shown by changes to rituals, a dead end, or have people adapted to death in a modern way aligned with how we live our lives, always so busy? Is this why so much of death is passed to professionals in hospitals, hospices, or funeral directors? I shouldn’t see this necessarily as a negative.
Does Fisher and Derrida’s argument provide an explanation of the sense of melancholy in looking at old photographs, particularly those associated with death? Fisher quotes Frederic Jameson, who in turn questions whether the choice of what is excluded in photographs, whether high-rise blocks or artefacts or appliances which might be used to date an image, is done to “blur contemporaneity” (Fisher, 2012, pp. 16–17) This is an interesting thought that perhaps subconsciously, we edit our own work, our selections and archival material to fit with a certain melancholy and in so doing, shape the meaning we take from these photographs. It is a thought that seems to echo the view of the photograph, not as an inert artefact that reminds us of the past but as a powerful object that interacts with human memory. Is the link between liminality and hauntology that we can take fragments of what was and what might have been and replay this and remix these things in our heads, rewriting the past and the possible future and recodifying our memories? Does my major project, based on loss, shape my own sense of loss rather than me shaping my final body of work? It appears that there is an action and a reaction here. Is the balance point on the liminal boundary? This puts my physical piece of a see-saw in a slightly different light. It will be very interesting to see this installed in the art gallery and to think about this when I experience how it makes me feel.
References
Barthes, R. (1981) Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Vintage Books.
Dalgleish, R. (2023) How Our Dead Are Remembered Through Photography. Open College of the Arts.
Derrida, J. (1994) Specters of Marx. Abingdon: Routledge.
Derrida, J. (1998) Right of Inspection. Translated by D. Wills. New York: Monacelli Press.
Fisher, M. (2012) ‘What is hauntology?’, Film Quarterly, 66(1), pp. 16–24. doi: 10.1525/FQ.2012.66.1.16.
Hallam, E. and Hockey, J. (2001) ‘Remembering as Cultural Process’, in Robben, A. C. G. M. (ed.) Death, Mourning, and Burial: A Cross Cultural Reader. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 52–63.
Joyce, J. (2017) Ulysses. 3rd Edition. Richmond, Surrey: Alma Classics.
Langford, M. (2021) Suspended Conversations: The Afterlife of Memory in Photographic Albums. Quebec City: McGil-Queen’s University Press.
Sontag, S. (1979) On Photography. London: Penguin Books.
[1] I showed in my dissertation that although the photograph is thought by many to extend memories, this is a misunderstanding of the role of the photograph. “The photograph is a powerful tool of memory used in relation to grief to provide a sense of those we have lost. However, the memory which uses the photograph as a trigger will fail to find a real trace of the deceased but instead will only find a shell. There is a duality in the photograph, where it can act as both a gateway and as a trigger for memory but at the same time can be seen as a block for memory. More than that, every photograph shows a view from the past and where a loved one has been captured, the photograph is a sign of their mortality, whether or not they still live or not. The dead remain dead. The photograph cannot return them to life.“ (Dalgleish, 2023, p. 1)