Idea Post #2: Memory

photo credit: http://www.cinepremiere.com.mx/files/images/eternalsunshine.jpg

from the movie, Eternal Sunshine and the Spotless Mind

Memories. Many of us believe that memories make us who we are. That because something happened to us and we remember it that this is what shapes us. However, this is not true. Memories aren't really anything. Once the reality is over and we start to remember certain events as truths, our brains immediately start to change and distort what really happened. When you are looking back on things that happened when you were young, like say a birthday party, you are stringing together many different emotions and faces and things you did. With each string of memory that you place together is like putting together a bunch of fake realities. You are painting a picture of what used to be true. And each time that you look back on this same birthday, you remember it slightly differently than you did the last time you remembered it. Your emotions affect the way you remember something. So every memory isn't the same as the last and it is always changing the way you perceive it.

(the ideas and research from this paragraph is taken from Radiolab: Episode #304: memory and forgetting)

Howard, Jan, and Laurie Simmons. "Picturing Memories." Laurie Simmons: the Music of Regret. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1997. 15-16. Print.

We as photographers deal very much with memory. Think of photo albums either on facebook or in reality, that someone has taken many photos of an event, (ie wedding, graduation, party) in hopes to never forget that moment. People believe that recording the event in the form of pictures solidifies the moment. Many photographers build projects based on memory. Laurie Simmons does this in a different way. Laurie Simmons draws from her childhood and the memories that she has from then. "Rather than records of events, memories are constructions that record our interpretations of events. Emotions determine how we experience daily routine happening..."(Howard, pg. 15) This is how Jan Howard describes Laurie Simmons's work. The memory that drives the work and records how she feels about the memory. This lines up perfectly with the idea that every time you think of something, your emotion has influence on that memory.

Memory relates to my work and work I'd like to make in different ways. I am interested in memory in the way that Simmons is interested in memory. I have created memories of my mother and my grandmother together in a place that doesn't exist. Like Simmons I am creating my own memory of this event. It in some way is based on true events but is distorted in my mind and in my creation. And I'd like to continue making work in this fashion. I think I want to do childhood, or growing up for themes of new work.

Howard, Jan, and Laurie Simmons. "Picturing Memories." Laurie Simmons: the Music of Regret. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1997. 15-16. Print.

"Radiolab: Episode #304: Memory and Forgetting." RadioLab. WNYC, New York, New York. Radio.