The Metaphors of Photography and the Metaphors of Memory – Artistic Reflections on an Album of Family Photographs

We can often notice that the discourse concerning photography – both in theoretic discourse and in common language – frequently tends to explain the characteristics, mechanisms, and the manner of existence of photography by transfers of terms, metaphors and imaginary constructions. Starting from this observation, the present study aims at analyzing the metaphoric language use related to photography through images such as that of the imprint, the trace, and the notion of index. The analysis emphasizes the similarities between these notions and the metaphors of memory used in the modern scientific terminology: engram, pattern and memory trace. Preserving the analogy between memory and photography, we can observe in the case of the latter, as well, the disjunction between a public memory (semantic memory) and an autobiographical memory (episodical memory). Family photography, which is the most prevalent practice in the field of photography, falls under the category of the second memory type. In the second part of the study we propose an original “reading” of the family album – an artistic/pictorial interpretation of the metaphors of photography and memory.

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