Experiment - Postcards from a place - we live here now
Fig.1 Halsall 2024 We live here now
Location: Somerset, Barrow Mump visible on horizon. What three words: awakening.condensed.bulletins
Time: 30 July 2024, 12:30-14:30
Experiment in documenting an banal event. My family and I broke down in Somerset, seemingly miles from civilization. The wait for roadside recovery seemed eternal. The images were taken whilst we waited for roadside recovery. Postcards from a random place.
Documenting family events creates a difficult choice. We tend to focus on the positives, selectively removing, editing out the sad moments. Reading Stephen Bulll, Photography -The Kodak Culture of snapshots: Tourism, Family and Memory, it reminds me how complex our relationship with photography can be, when it comes to memory and evidence. Kodak encouraged us to travel, to document our lives , smiling, positive moments, the chapter even suggests that Kodak was instrumental with the formation of the institution of family (2010:89). We use our family albums, as declarations of validity and documents of proof.
Martha Langford argues that the family album remains a performance, presenting a constructed version of the identity of its participants both to the participants themselves and to others - a process in which the addition of written explanation and narrative occupies a key role. (cited in Bull, 2001:93)
However it is interesting to note the moments we do choose to document; birthdays, weddings, graduations. What about all the moments inbetween? I suppose we don’t want to remember the rainy Saturdays, or the mundane shopping trips, dentist appointments, or Monday mornings.
(Nancy) West sees this memorializing as an attempt to seize control of time and find stability in an idealized past whilst in the midst of constant change…..From this perspective , the snapshot might be thought of not as a memory preserved but as a plan for nostalgia” (cited in Bull, 2010:91)
My children thought breaking down was a novelty, perhaps I took these images to preserve the absurdity of the moment, on the way to my graduation in Falmouth we broke down. It was a blistering hot day, we had no idea where we were. I was bored, and perhaps immortalizing this moment, made me take on board the concept of ‘living in the moment’.
The images were taken with a Lumix Panasonic DMC FS28. A little pocket sized point and click. From a personal perspective, this adds to the nature of this small project, which passed the time, and has also served to change the relevance of the memory, it has become more pivotal than the time ‘we broke down near Bridgewater’, it is now an illustrated story of our family, where with purpose, I took images with the intention that the event be remembered with fondness and novelty.
REFERENCES
BULL, S. 2010. Photography. London ; New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
FIGURES
Figure 1. HALSALL, Penny. 2024 We live here now.