Margarat Nee - A Thin Veneer: Thesis
I’ve been using the same model of toy camera for years, but I’m still surprised by the results. Particularly surprising things happen when I photograph old objects; they seem to come alive, as if recording their physical presence on film activates the recording of a spiritual presence that I can’t see through my own eyes.(1) This is especially true of the everyday items that have had years of human handling, the mundane objects that we treasure because they remind us of the small events that merge to become our personal history. Such items work like family photos have, as mnemonic triggers for stories that are the source of meaning for that object or photo. These are the stories that through time become bardic recitations which are more about performance than accuracy.(2) Our efforts to preserve memories in photographs may be futile as digital media rises in popularity, and our confidence in photographs to signify our memories becomes in itself a nostalgic sentiment. The process I went through on this project was prompted by an urge to know and articulate the stories which I felt were being activated in my memory by these seemingly unremarkable photographs of chairs.
The first step I took with the photos was deciding to digitize them in order to open them up to a wider scope of exploration. Coming to digital imaging from a background in photography I bring along a stubborn attachment to preserving the integrity of the analog photographic process. Even after years of digitally manipulating photographs my first instinct is to leave the image as the camera captured it. During this project I focused on experimenting more freely with technology and materials, while still maintaining some recognition for the photographic process that is so fascinating to me. With the computer I exaggerated the loss of detail inherent in the original negatives, and began to use color as a catalyst; opening them up from the limits of the black-and-white negative and moving radically away from realistic tonal ranges. These changes emphasized a sense of dislocation that was already suggested in the images (When does one ever see rocking chairs in the woods?). My next step was to transpose them again through printing, to bring them back from the disembodied nature of their digital existence. I wanted to articulate this renewed physicality, and began to employ a combination of materials that I’d never used before to accomplish this. I had the images printed on canvas, which has a weight and texture that gave them a strong physical presence. The worn plywood was chosen because I saw clear parallels to the chairs on several levels. Plywood is such a common manufactured item that we overlook its origins, but as it decays its genuine nature is revealed in the colors and textures that come to the surface. The color of the ageing wood influenced my work with the prints because I wanted the prints to visually compliment the wood rather than treating it simply as a background for the images. I then began using encaustic, which I found to be an ideal way to work with the canvas prints. The historical uses for wax as a sealant and as a preservative endure in this project both practically and metaphorically, helping each piece become a singular object by blurring the distinctions between the elements that it is made of. All these materials work together in the final pieces as sensory triggers; the touch, smell, and appearance reminding us of the decay that is inescapable in the physical world.
An important change in the process came the first time I decided to cut up and reformulate one of the prints. This first collage was an experiment, there was no plan beyond simple aesthetics. When I finished with it I was surprised to find that I had unknowingly created another chair in my collage; what I had designed abstractly turned into a cubistic chair when viewed from another angle. This led me to look at the two chairs that I had photographed as models or archetypes rather than simply the chairs I already knew, I now saw there was more to divine if I looked beyond my own historical attachment to those particular chairs. I set out to create hybrid chairs using both physical and digital collage methods. When collaging with the images in digital form the choices are dauntingly infinite, and the changes made to the original images can be so subtly performed that they may not be immediately apparent to the viewer. When collaging with the canvas prints those seamless digital manipulations are broken, and the construction made with those parts is clearly visible. These two dramatically different methods of collage act cooperatively to further unsettle the expectation for recognition that viewers bring to images with photographic origins.
The final significant shift in the process came in a single moment, and connected all of my preceding explorations and intuitions. It connected the images, ideas, and processes that I had so far only been making use of in a tentative way. I was in my studio looking at the largest (and first) print of one of the chairs. It was dusk, so the light coming into the studio was dim. I was listening to the Marriage of Figaro. At the very end of the opera is a beautiful, slow passage about forgiveness. Without understanding the words one can understand the music and voices together forming a transcendent sound. It was at that moment of listening and looking that the connections which have fed the work became clear to me. I remembered how much I loved this moment of the opera when I first saw it as a child - in a New Hampshire high school gymnasium as my father conducted the production that my mother designed. As I looked at the image of this decrepit rocking chair in the woods I began to cry because I realized that these chairs represented my parents; the process of degeneration was taking place in the woods and in my home. I became acutely aware of the debt I owed them, that I was able to make this work because of the collection of experiences they made possible.
Many viewers have told me that they feel a disturbing and dislocated sense of nostalgia when they look at the work, a vague sense of familiarity that they want to understand. These responses triggered a connection in my mind to geographical maps,(3) and I felt very strongly that there was a relationship between mapping and memory. It seemed to me that the mind made patterns that worked like maps do, as tools for wayfinding to help us place ourselves in time and in relation to our community. I felt that there our minds have layers of these memory maps, personal ones on top of collective ones, which mingle as we collect them, resulting in distortions and errors. In order to articulate my ideas more clearly I began to research theories on collective and autobiographical memory, and memory distortion. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it all seemed very familiar to me, as the ideas that I read corresponded closely with the ideas I had already formed on my own.
I found many pertinent theories that examined both the sociological and neurological aspects of memory. I read theories on collective memory that describe the way collective and personal memories influence each other,(4) and looked into theories on how the brain itself manages memories. What seems to be the most commonly held theory is that the brain stores different aspects of an event in different regions, then re-collects those fragments to form memories.(5) It is during this process that errors and distortions happen, influenced by our emotions, events in the present,(6) and whether there is a clear source for the memory that has been triggered.(7) One variation on this theory describes the experience of remembering as a unique entity in and of itself,(8) an idea that for me proposed a resemblance between the production of memories and the production of art.
Notes
1. Permutt. I discovered this book a dozen years ago, shortly after I began using a toy camera. It shows examples of Spirit Photography, from the inception of photography up to the 1980’s. One of the things I love about this book is that the author never questions the authenticity of any of the photographs in the book, though he describes this approach as objectivity. This genre of photography depends on a tenacious attachment to the mechanical nature of the camera. The sub-genre of Mind Photography is an interesting point of contention for this position, because it involves a person using their mind to “expose” film in a closed camera, thus making the camera obsolete. return to text
2. Ross, B. Chapter 9, ‘Memory Transmission and Cultivation’, discusses the influence of oral traditions on memory. One aspect of this is the pattern of techniques used in the transmission of oral culture, “Verbatim memorization and practice by repetition were not part of the bardic technique.” Themes and formulas were used, and there was little concern for the chronology of events or the accuracy of details, as long as the important ideas were transmitted and the drama was maintained. These characteristics of the bardic tradition can be seen today in the oral transmission of personal memories, when family photographs and momentos act as mnemonic aids and nostalgia becomes a significant ingredient. “In sum, it is obvious that nostalgia does not imply any concerted attempt to recover veridical memories. Accordingly, accurate recall is often deemphasized, while on the affective side nostalgia is not so much an attempt to recall experienced emotions as to engender them… Although the souvenir and the instant snapshot give us a measure of immediate pleasure, we must wait through time and distance to gain full pleasure from contemplating the past and the absent.” 186. return to text
3. Wood. This book discusses the ways in which culture and mapping influence each other.return to text
4. Halbwachs. Most of the research I found on collective memory focused on the Holocaust and other examples of large trauma events. Halbwachs focused on the crucial influence of family and community on the construction of personal memories, and on the continuous interchange between individual and collective memory over time.
5. Schacter, Searching. “Neuroscientists believe that the brain records an event by strengthening the connections between groups of neurons that participate in encoding the experience. A typical incident in our everyday lives consists of numerous sights, sounds, actions, and words. Different areas of the brain analyze these varied aspects of an event. As a result, neurons in the different regions become more strongly connected to one another. The new pattern of connections constitutes the brain’s record of the event: the engram.” 59 I quote Schacter's Searching for Memory here and in subsequent notes because it explains these theories concisely and clearly, written as it was for a general audience. More detailed and scientific accounts can be found in Memory Distortion, and numerous other academic texts.
6. This theory of retroactive interference began with Halbwachs. He is cited as the first sociologist to emphasize the idea that we use our present circumstances (and related mental images) to reconstruct our past (and its images). This theory has been studied further by numerous researchers, including authors I looked at such as Ross, Schacter, and others.
7. Schacter, Searching. Schacter calls this "Implicit memory: when people are influenced by a past experience without any awareness that they are remembering." Numerous studies in this area involved amnesia and blindsight, and it is seen as separate from Freud's theory of repressed memory. One of the key elements to implicit memory is "priming", the influence of previous exposure to images or ideas independent of conscious memory or recognition." Experiments had already shown that seeing pictures of familiar objects such as a chair or a house produces priming when people later attempt to identify fragmented pictures of chairs or houses." 161-183.
8. Schacter, Searching. "Although it is often assumed that a retrieval cue merely arouses or activates a memory that is slumbering in the recesses of the brain, I have hinted at an alternative: the cue combines with the engram to yield a new, emergent entity - the recollective experience of the rememberer - that differs from either of its constituents." 70.