From Propaganda to the Personal: WAVES, Memory, and the “Prick” of Photography

Intimate relationships with Shirley Baker’s photos of Manchester and Salford: the mnemonic potential of documentary photos

“…Their contribution to collective memory has also been the focus of a small but important body of scholarship (Blaikie 2006;Hagiopan 2006;Kuhn 1995Kuhn /2002) that traces the 'social biographies' (Edwards 2002, 68) of photographic images, tracking their use and circulation, and the meanings ascribed to them in different contexts. How people relate to documentary photography and its potential for personal memory are, nevertheless, still not widely appreciated or understood, although there is evidence of their significance: the ways in which some marginalised communities have repurposed historical photos of ancestors, often produced in the context of colonial administration, to serve community and family remembrance (see for example: Lydon 2010; Payne 2011); how people with a public profile narrate their lives drawing on documentary images of themselves, or created by themselves (Schiebel and Robel 2011;Ryan 2011;Mauud 2011). The mnemonic potential of documentary photos is also acknowledged by researchers who use them to stimulate recollection about social change (eg Schwartz 1989;Modell and Brodsky 1994;Harper 2001;Byrne and Doyle 2004) and several factors are seen to influence this process (Tinkler 2013), including: personal relevance; how photographic images are conceptualised; how, if at all, photos feature in people's lives.…”