This book was recommended to me by tutor at my last feedback session.

Part one of my review

I am specifically interested in the remembrance of those who are dead.

The book starts by looking at some old photographs and questioning the poses. Why is this person holding a closed photo-case or why has another subject been photographed with a large framed image or with a string of beads perhaps used as memory or counting aids? (Batchen, 2004, p. 11) My initial thought was that some of this can maybe be explained by posing techniques for longer shutter speeds and maybe using the hand propping up the head or the hand holding a prop. The more interesting feature of Batchen’s work, and more relevant to my research, is that these objects and poses that might be related to trying to capture the sense of memory in a photograph.

I have previously written on memory and the photographic image and how the act of looking at photography again and again can shape and change the memory such that we are remembering the photograph rather than the event of which the photograph is a representation. Batchen’s work allows me to look at memory from a different perspective, namely that of the act of remembrance rather than the act of memory and of the use of abstract objects to signpost the act of remembrance.

Batchen references a 3-pane travelling mirror from the 1860s where the owner (Batchen references the owner as a she) has replaced central with a painted tintype image. As Batchen says, “Every time the owner of the mirror opened the case for her daily toilet, she would have been reminded of that man in the tin-type – would have stared into his face even as she looked at the reflected image of her own. Merely to open the mirror was to perform a memorial act”(Batchen, 2004, p. 18) I was surprised here by Batchen’s words as when I looked at the mirror I didn’t think of that memorial act. Instead, it seemed to me to be about control and lack of privacy and even a sexual element where the woman being watched. I suppose the idea of the memorial act can take on all of these forms. Memorial doesn’t have to be about sad reflection.

The next object of interest if where Batchen describes a locket containing a set of photographs. The locket is a physical object which combines the senses of touch and vision. Batchen tells us, “Imagine a silver locket lying in your hand, cold at first, and then warming as it absorbs the heat of your body. Its metallic surfaces are articulated with incised patterns, geometric and floral designs that emphasize its circular form. Designed to be touched, the locket touches back, grazing your skin with its textured surfaces. This is an object with an inside and an outside, and to be experienced, it must be handled as well as viewed. But only when you open it do you realize that it is also a photographic artifact.” (Batchen, 2004, p. 32)

This is a fascinating passage which I want to explore. An item to be touched and which touches back. I am struck here by the photograph. We look and in the same sense that this locket touches back, does the photograph “look back at us”? I am reminded from my days studying physics of Isaac Newton’s laws of motion. The third of these laws, states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is interesting to consider a touch or listening or looking as a sense of motion to which, this is an opposite. The locket as it is touched, givens up the secrets of its texture. Maybe this is another example of the philosophical debate about whether a tree in an empty forest make a sound when it falls if there is nobody to hear it. Does the locket only have a texture if it is touched? When I look at a photograph, it might be glossy so I might partially see my reflection but if I can only see the image, I might begin to explore the shapes and form of the photograph, the motifs and colours, the subject and the viewpoint. If I do not look at the photograph, does it have none of these things? Does the photographic image only exist if we choose to look? This reminds me very much of visiting graveyards. Of the rows of gravestones, of the people who lie there. Have they been forgotten and if we forget these people, do they cease to exist? Is touching and looking at that the locket a communication between the silversmith who created the locket and the photographer who created the images and the owner who put these things together and if the photographs deal with remembrance, is handling and looking at such work, communication with the dead in the same way as visiting a graveyard? To add another layer of complexity here, what if I take a photograph of the graves and take these away with me? Sontag tells us that, “Photographs furnish evidence”. “A photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that a given thing happened. The picture may distort, but there is always a presumption that something exists, or did exist, which is like what’s in the picture.”(Sontag, 1979, p. 5) Does the camera and the photograph act as a mechanical ‘anchor’ which keeps something with us, in the real world. This, I suppose, could be achieved to a similar end by taking sound recording of that tree in the forest. The machine of the camera or of the sound recorder becomes an extension of the human eye and the human ear.

I was also stuck when I looked at the image of that locket that these often associated with death maybe with personal items such a lock of hair.

Batchen references handwriting which could be used to personalise a photograph and to provide a sense of the person who was writing those words. Or if a verse included which is then spoken aloud, brings the rhythms of the words used to the fore. Batchen references a poem found tucked behind a photograph as an appeal for someone to be remembered after they are dead.

Letherolfsville Oct 29 AD 1959

This is the likeness of Catherine Christ
When I am dead and in my grave
And when my bones are rotten
Remember me
When this you see
Or I shall be forgotten
The grass is green The rose is red
Here is my name when I am dead

(Batchen, 2004, p. 47)

Batchen has searched for this phase the grass is green/the rose is red and found it been used is other places and times and seems to have been common practice in the US in the nineteenth century as a plea not to be forgotten by future generations.

Batchen then considers that a photograph is not enough to function as a “compelling memorial experience”. Some form of hybrid must be formed along with the photograph, whether using different art forms such as the silverwork of the locket, the addition of writing of verse or of lockets of hair. “They suggest that something creative must be done to a photograph, some addition has to be made to its form, if it is to function as an effective memory object” (Batchen, 2004, p. 48)

Batchen talks of photograph albums and says that these are about the sense of touch as much as they are about looking. An album is opened, its pages turned, the photographs and any text is looked at and talked over. These are seen as an assemblage of images and text, sometimes drawing and scraps to form collage and allow the owners and creators to form their own arrangement. “Albums give everyday people the opportunity to represent their auto-biographies in artful combinations of words and pictures”.(Batchen, 2004, p. 57)

I would question Batchen’s use of the term ‘everyday people’ as I believe art to be accessible to be created and enjoyed by everyone. In addition, it seems to me that photo albums might not have been seen as complete and unchangeable so the act of removing some images and adding new ones all adds to this creative act. It is also worth asking why the photograph album has been created? Is it a life story? A commemoration of birth, childhood, birthdays and notable events? We had family album my mother put together for her aunt when her aunt had Alzheimer’s. The book was a visual representation of that person’s life and acted as an aide-mémoire. At no point here have I mentioned a photograph album as a way to remember a life story after a person had died but I can think of no reason why this wouldn’t have been done. Maybe it is the same album which been enjoyed during life has a change of focus to show what was?

Batchen speaks of fotoescultura which are Mexican items for displaying images, somewhere between a picture frame and a shrine. In themselves these do no call out to me but Batchen’s words are interesting, “In this practice the photograph is treated as a tangible metaphor” and “While the photograph speaks of death, of time’s passing, the fotoescultura speaks of eternal life, suggesting the possibility of a perpetual stasis, the fully dimensioned presence of the present.” (Batchen, 2004, p. 64) He then references Barthes who had said that the use of the photograph as a mortal witness for what has been this acted against the supposed immortality of death. These thoughts of perpetual stasis of the immortality of death are interesting. Is death immortal if there is nobody to remember? Or is death an absolute regardless of whether we remember? The photograph might act as a witness yet so many are unrepresented by photography that this would seem to imply that most live and die in complete anonymity.

Part two of my review

One thing of interest is the use of human hair in remembrance. This section is of interest to my work so I will spend a little time thinking and reviewing this part of Batchen’s book.

Hair is very accessible. It is easy to snip some hair either when subject is alive or after death and to keep this lock of hair as a connection between the person still alive and the person no longer alive. Locks of hair were added to photographs or used to weave threads to make abstract symbolic artefacts or to incorporate into jewellery. This could be done to memorialise the dead or as a love token or an act of friendship. So, these aren’t always related to death, other than when viewed as historic artefacts when the subject and the first-hand or primary audience are all dead.

 

 

 

 

 

Batchen asks why has hair been added to these images and what purpose it serves? He answers his own question suggesting that, “The hair serves a metonymic memorial function, standing in for the body of the absent subject.” (Batchen, 2004, p. 73). I find this idea interesting and quite difficult to comprehend so have expanded on idea of metonymic objects in another piece of research separate from this review of Batchen’s book. My further exploration of metonymy can be found at following link, https://richarddalgleish.net/metonymy-and-the-photograph/

Batchen described the locket that was purchase online by him and having no known history. He tells us that the hair has a reddish tint. Batchen suggests the hair cut from the man when he was younger than when shown in the photograph. He wonders if object made by a loved one after the death of the man in the locket. Batchen asks, “What kind of memory does it [the locket] seek to stimulate?” (Batchen, 2004, p. 67)

We look at such objects or images in found family albums and naturally start to construct our own stories. Am sure anyone might be able to form their own story. This idea of giving photograph or objects a new story and so a new life which might well have nothing whatsoever to do with their original purpose is intriguing. I wonder for example if the lock of hair did not belong to that man but memorialises and symbolises someone else. Does the hair symbolise a mother and does this imply no photographic record existed of her? Or maybe a secret lover where her image not shown to preserved his or her anonymity. An invisible person missing from the photographic record and remembered through this man and a lock of hair? But then lost and re-found as this object cast adrift from its original purpose.

It also occurs to me that the Victorian idea of what macabre might mean seems to be very different from our modern ideas. The use of photographs of dead people alongside their families or death masks or use of hair are not thing common in modern western society.

Batchen goes onto describe a box, constructed in 1857 and showing images with hand written inscriptions. Each image is accompanied with a lock of hair. Batchen wonders what box might have held suggesting a collection of keepsakes. This reminds me very much of my daughter’s memory box. The empty box and my unopened box. This an interesting idea that I have jotted down in my notebook as an idea for creative work.

Another similar case contains a portrait of a woman called Anna Mowatt along with a lock of hair and a cutting of rosemary, said to be a signifier of memory. An interesting collection to touch different senses. As Batchen says, “Every time you open this daguerreotype case, the very air you breathe is suffused with memories of her, even before you read Anna’s name or look at her image or touch the remnant of her body”. (Batchen, 2004, p. 72)

I am interested in the symbolism of plants although I know very little about this subject. I wonder about the transfer of human ideas and emotions onto different flowers and plants and why this is done and why certain plants been given additional meaning. I have learned that rosemary been used since ancient times. The Egyptians laid sprigs of rosemary on coffins and tombstones and the plant, and presumably the beliefs associated with the plant, came to northern Europe with the Romans. Interestingly, in ancient Greece, students and scholars wore rosemary to help with memory. (Gerarde et al., no date) (Dean, 2015) Scientific experiment has since proven that rosemary does indeed have a quantifiable beneficial impact on cognition.(Moss et al., 2018) Dugan writes about the history of perfume and touches onto rosemary. She says, “The particular smell of rosemary was a complicated signifier of disease and death. Commonly associated with rituals of memory, its scent symbolized betrothals, marriages, and funerals” Dugan goes onto describe that as it was used to try and combat plague, its smell became linked to disease, “The scent of rosemary thus became a harbinger both of erotic, affective promise and diseased peril.” (Dugan, 2011, p. 99)

I wonder if Batchen’s example of the rosemary in the daguerreotype case, just 200 or so years after the plague outbreaks, means that the rosemary could have signified death, marriage, friendship, eroticism and promise or maybe a combination of these things or maybe none of them. It might have just been a plant which signified a special place or occasion.

Batchen speaks of finding another memorial object in a shop consisting of a portrait, the words “At Rest” and rosettes Batchen assumes made from human hair along wide some wax butterflies, a wax wreath with flowers. He asks, “What possible relationship could I, as a viewer of this picture today, have to her?” (Batchen, 2004, p. 77) This idea echoes my thoughts on re-purposing an image and giving it a new history as of course, unless the original history of the photograph has been documented, what chance would I ever have of discovering the truth of a historic image?

Batchen goes onto discuss the wreath with history from ancient Greece as a victory garland or in Rome as a celebration of a god or to celebrate the winter solstice and were later used by Christians as a symbol of “victory over death”. Batchen goes on to speak of the circular form of wreaths to symbolise eternal life and the symbolism of the plants and flowers used, giving examples of cypress and willow to signify mourning. (Batchen, 2004, p. 92)  Is the wax wreath an attempt to build a man-made structure which might last longer than flowers? Is this an attempt to defeat the withering and decay of plants? If so then why use wax and not a more permanent choice of material? It is interesting that within the skills of braiding hair or making materials or pressing flowers or making wax plants, the photograph is placed into the shrine. Batchen speaks of the juxtaposition of the modern and mechanical process of photography alongside older skills and handicrafts. (Batchen, 2004, p. 93). I wonder then if such memorials were common before the invention of photography and the image of the deceased was added to the construction as photography became an everyday thing? The difference between pre-photography and photography is the visual image. The pre-industrial skills and handicrafts are abstract ways of remembering someone with no sense of visual memory. This is in stark contrast to a memorial which contains a photograph. Batchen returns to his idea that, “Something must be done to the photograph to pull it (and us) out of the past and into the present” and, “…the efforts of ordinary people to overcome – or at least reduce – the power of photography to replace living, emotive memories with static and historical images.” (Batchen, 2004, p. 94) It is interesting his words reduce and overcome as I imagined the use of hair or plants and words added to a photograph would enhance its power. Maybe this speaks of how people have been memorialised in the past which will be a massive subject in its own right. I also wonder if there is something here if the photograph being capable of stealing the soul or the essence of a person.

Batchen finds an essay taken from an 1867 women’s magazine called Godey’s Lady Book and quoted in Smith from 1999,

“Somehow it gives me a desolate feeling to think of having my faded picture trundled about some hundred years hence as worthless lumber, of being tolerated as a thing of habit, rather than affection, in some out-of-the-way corner. Perhaps saucy children will some day stick pins through my eyes, and scratch my cheeks and nobody will be grieved or angered by it” (Smith, 2002, p. 51)

These words go to the heart of what happens after we die, what happens to our memories and to those who remember us and to our memorials. In perhaps a sad way, the essay assumes that someone in the future will own the image even if they don’t treat it with respect. It doesn’t look beyond the pictures being played with by children or left in a forgotten corner and look at potential future of there being nothing left. No artefacts. No memories. No relatives or maybe just no relative who care. Is this an extension of Barthes words about the photograph being a harbinger of death? Is the photograph a harbinger of nothingness as if that person had never even existed, leaving no trace or imprint on the future? The light that touched that person and touched the film or memory card and was looked at and touched again and again is gone. The light had faded and the photograph has vanished.

Batchen names Barthes speaking of the man awaiting his execution, “I shudder, like Winnicott’s psychotic patient, over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe.” (Barthes, 1981, p. 96)

References

Barthes, R. (1981) Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Vintage Books.

Batchen, G. (2004) Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Available at: http://books.google.com/books?id=2YAXe5_y3IIC&pgis=1.

Dean, J. (2015) Rosemary plant is universal symbol of remembrance, Redlands Daily Facts – Things to do, Home and Garden. Available at: https://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/2015/09/28/rosemary-plant-is-universal-symbol-of-remembrance/ (Accessed: 8 May 2022).

Dugan, H. (2011) The Ephemeral History of Perfume: Scent and Sense in Early Modern England. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Gerarde et al. (no date) Rosemary, Nutritional Geography. Available at: https://nutritionalgeography.faculty.ucdavis.edu/rosemary/ (Accessed: 8 May 2022).

Moss, M. et al. (2018) ‘Acute ingestion of rosemary water: Evidence of cognitive and cerebrovascular effects in healthy adults’, Journal of Psychopharmacology, 32(12), pp. 1319–1329. doi: 10.1177/0269881118798339.

Smith, S. M. (2002) ‘American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture’, Princeton University Press, 93(3), pp. 494–495.

Sontag, S. (1979) On Photography. London: Penguin Books.