Photography and Memory
Thursday 19 June 2008
10.30am - 4pm
University of Manchester
Around the world, people's personal photographs of familiar places, family members and special occasions are treasured mementoes: they help us remember and tell stories about our own lives and those of the people and places closest to us. Such photographs can possess enormous power, moving us to nostalgia, joy, sadness, anger.
Taking participants' own pictures as a starting point, the workshop will explore the significance of such photographs for those who make them or keep them. We shall practice techniques of image analysis, enhancing our awareness of how images make meanings and of how personal photographs figure in acts of remembering.
Using these insights, we shall then begin to explore the continuities and discontinuities between personal memory and collective and cultural memory, and to consider the potential of the workshop as a methodological strategy in qualitative cultural research.
The workshop will be led by Annette Kuhn, Professor of Film Studies at Queen Mary, University of London and an editor of the journal Screen. Her research interests include visual culture and cultural memory. She has written about photography, film and memory in Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination (1995; 2nd ed. 2002) and An Everyday Magic: Cinema and Cultural Memory (2002), and is co-editor (with Kirsten Emiko McAllister) of Locating Memory: Photographic Acts (2006). Her book on Lynne Ramsay's film Ratcatcher will be published in the BFI Modern Classics series in June 2008.
Participation in the workshop is by prior reservation only. Participants should bring along one personal photograph to the workshop, and are advised to read the following in advance:
Annette Kuhn, Family Secrets (London: Verso, 1995 and 2002), Chapter 1. 'Photography and cultural memory: a methodological exploration'. Visual Studies, vol.22, no.3 (2007), pp.283-292.
There are 14 places available on this workshop. As places are limited, you are advised to book early. There is a £15 charge, payable in advance, to cover the cost of lunch and refreshments. A booking form is attached, also a form for payment by credit card. If you have any questions, please do get in touch. Please indicate that the subject of your email is 'Photography and Memory Workshop'.
The closing date for receipt of booking forms and payment is 4 June 2008.
Email: penny.tinkler@manchester.ac.uk