Enjoy It While It Lasts
Project 365 here 365Pieces
Feb 1st, 2011 @ 8:10 pm
First Memory
Just in case you missed it, here’s my Project 365 blog.
As part of the (deep breath) Intergenerational Photography Project that I’m part of, we’re making/creating/doing an exhibiton. The exhibition will be hosted by Draíocht between April 7th and May 28th.
But plugs aside… The theme of the exhibition is that of memory. And more specifically, first memories. We each had to ponder what our first memory was, and once we had (for want of a better word) remembered, we had to work out ways to photograph them. Let me explain how it works.
We all have a first memory. But they’re mostly snippets of an event or a tiny moment in time. What we have to do is take the defining moment in that memory, recreate it, and photograph it. One of the women who is part of the project’s first memory is being ignored by her family at her grandmother’s funeral, and having to work out what was going on by herself. She thinks she was about four at the time. She says she remembers all the adults clustered around her Father whispering and telling him how sorry they were etc, while she was left to decipher what they meant and why everyone was so upset.
Obviously she can’t go back in time to photograph her family so we have to work around that. What we do for each person is discuss the memory and talk about ways of capturing the memory on film. More importantly, we want to capture what the person felt at the time. Because when we think about it, our memories are all about what we were feeling rather than what was going on. This woman felt confused (as I did in my first memory) and bewildered. After much discussion (seriously we have spent so many hours talking about these bloody memories) of how we can recreate the memory, the person whose memory it is chooses the way that they want it to be photographed and we work out how to actually do that.
This woman decided on having a group of the old members of the project stood clustered together with a pair of children’s boots in front of them. You can only see the adult’s legs’ and waists. Yeah, it’s a bit simple, but simplicity is everything when you’re photographing through a pinhole camera. ~That’s the twist you see. the exhibition won’t be of digitial photographs. We’re taking the photos with matchbox cameras (mine is below) on black and white film. The matchbox camera gives a nice hazy effect (memories. Duh!) and the black and white is our - not at all heavy handed - way of showing how they are in the past etc.
As you can see, the thing is pretty small. It fits easily into your pocket, with room for your phone too! Obviously the pictures you get aren’t as clear as those from digital cameras (hence what I said about simplicity) but the results are pretty fucking great when you look at them. Here are two photos I took and developed all by myself~
This is my bedroom. The light looks like it’s moving but that’s because the camera moved as I but the shutter back into place. I just think it’s crazy how something so small and seemingly useless can make a picture like that. It’s just kinda magical like.
This is one I took of a teapot in the Draíocht’s café. I only developed and printed it today. I don’t know what those streaks of light are but they give it some character, don’t you think?
Yeah, ok, I’ll stop jizzing over pinhole photography now… isn’t it great though? But as I was saying, the photos that we will exhibit will be of our first memories. I have narrowed mine down to between April and August 1997. My memory is in a hospital. Now, this is where the problem lies - I don’t know why I was in a hospital. I think it’s when my Grandad died though. I’m pretty sure I remember him in a hospital but I’m not sure whether or not that’s just having been told about him. Something in me tells me that he was the reason 2 and half year old Ian was in the hospital though. That was in April of ‘97 and another thing happened in that year too. My niece was born. So my memory is of one of those events.
As you can tell, I’m not clear on who was in the hospital bed (I remember a bed surrounded by people, you see). When we were discussing my memory, we came up with the idea of recreating a hospital environment. It turned out pretty damn well if I do say so myself. Someone was able to bring in nurse’s clothes and we found all this shit that made the place look all clinical. I only have some digital versions of the photographs as the film from the matchbox camera hasn’t been developed. This is what it looked like though (in colour, and not hazy)
I am sorry but doesn’t it looks just like a hospital? I think we did a great job. Also, you can see out mentor, Garvan there, being all critical and such. Check out his site for all his work (which is amazing - Wearing Purple in particular).
Now, you’ll notice that you can’t see who’s in the bed. It’s all intentional of course because, if you (pardon the pun) remember correctly, I don’t remember/know who was in the bed. It gives the photo a nice mysterious quality; a quality that will only be heightened when we get the proper, black and white, pinhole versions.
You can probably guess that I’m really enjoying the course so far. I’ve met great new people (young and old), learned new skills and a thousand other clichés! I really hope the exhibition turns out well though.
And I expect all of you to attend at some point over its 7 week duration.
