FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH APPRECIATION:

INTRODUCTION. In the face of increasiny transient impersonal communication, coming to us through ubiquitous forms of mass media, ordinary people may be appreciating their own personal pictures more in both qualitative and quantitative ways. The value of family photographs, too, may be increasing in personal, social and cultural ways. On the other hand, maybe we are just hearing more about the value of personal pictures. Whenever we read newspaper accounts of natural or humanly coerced disasters -- floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, fires -- the recovery reports virtually always include some mention of people returning to their homes, searching for family pictures, sometimes framed, sometimes in albums, sometimes in shoe boxes. It seems only natural that people should mourn the loss of visible/visual traces of the past. When these artifacts are not found, we hear cries of "everything is gone -- we even lost our pictures..." To say the very least, family pictures are compelling pieces of our material culture. They are intimately connected to issues of identity and belonging, to evidence of existence and perhaps most important, and as a common thread, to memory.

But how is memory related to these images? When referring to family photography, most people immediately think of pictures called "snapshots." But we can stretch this notion of pictorial artifact to include the making, using and viewing of both still and motion pictures. I am using the term family photography in a very general way, to mean the non-professional leisure uses of cameras to make personal pictures as part of everyday life -- usually focused on family, very frequently around the house but sometimes away, as during vacation and/or travel time. Thus we are including snapshots, family albums, slides, home movies and home videotapes (Chalfen 1987).

Another set of issues and questions at the heart of this paper involves changing the medium of representation to perform the same set of functions. The central question here focuses on the innovative effects of home videotaping. What happens, for instance, when videotape replaces still photographs as the primary medium? What happens to memory-making, to memory-retainment when motion and sound accompany the picture? Is more better? Is the relation of medium, interpretation and memory the same? Or does one medium do a better job -- especially in the minds of our contemporary American teenagers? Are some pictorial forms favored over others -- do some forms serve memory needs better than others? These are the kind of questions I wish to explore in this paper.

CONNECTIONS TO PERSONAL MEMORY. It may be a truism now that family photography is very frequently associated with memory and general issues connected to recall of the past. Advertisements for cameras and film supplies frequently invoke a reference to memory. One ad for Fujicolor states: "Christmas is full of magical moments. Colorful. Exciting. A time of gifts and giving. Of warmth and wonder. Of memories you’ll want to treasure for years to come..." (Anon. 1992). Olympus cameras speak of the need "to capture the moment before it fades from memory" (Anon. 1992).

Perhaps the most compelling colloquial metaphor is to making a "memory bank." Indeed one of the most common justifications that ordinary people give for making snapshots, family albums, home movies, and now home video is the creation of a memory bank. This metaphor is quite telling -- a bank is locked up, it prevents loss, it preserves value, and in a sense, it disallows change. Financially relevant components of this metaphor are frequently invoked, e.g. interest grows with investment of picture taking energy, and time itself is very important -- 'it all pays dividends in the future -- we will have preserved our memories' or 'we will have our memories in place' (Chalfen, 1987). Whether metaphorically placed in an interest-bearing savings account or as goods placed in a tax-deferrable safe deposit box, values increase with time. Clearly the preference is to hold on to the past, to give pictures the chance of doing a better job than our memories can do -- namely, to provide stability and permanency for our personal and family knowledge of the past. But to use the vernacular of financial management, which "vehicle" best accomplishes this task?

But there can be dents in the memory bank metaphor. In one well known example, Eastman Kodak used to advertise their products with the phrase -- ‘memories that are forever.’ In retrospect we know that this claim became a problem for Kodak when several consumers noticed their color snapshots were fading -- the color was changing and, in a sense, draining life from the image. So much for the claim of "forever." I was struck by an interesting coincidence. Alongside this fading memories example, I recall seeing the phrase "nothing is forever" come into considerable popularity. These two examples form a foundation of introductory metaphors for the following paper, a paper grounded in popular thinking about the lasting natures of both memory and pictures. It may be much more complicated and problematic than the reductive bank metaphor implies. Maybe this is not the way the world, humans or photographs work. Or, better, perhaps, we need to know more about how humans work with photographs and how photographs work on humans.

METHODS OF STUDY. To get a better hold on some of these questions and related issues, I structured an exploratory project that asked a small sample of 30 teenagers, living in the Cambridge/Boston areas of Massachusetts to evaluate the relative merits of using still photography and/or videography as a preferred medium of family photography. While the sample was gender balanced, no attempt was made to represent ethnicity or social class. Snowball methods were used to recruit subjects producing a self-selected sample. In all cases, subjects either had their own family videotapes or had seen such tapes. Structured interviews and unstructured discussions, averaging two hours in length, were used to produce appropriate data. Interviews were conducted with two teenagers at the same time while we had a small meal together in a restaurant. Parental permissions were solicited when appropriate. Qualitative methods and analyses took precedence to quantitative ones in an effort to get a clearer idea of what could be studied further or what needed to be looked at in greater detail with additional research.

SELECTED RESULTS. In preliminary informal discussions, memory was cited as the key motive and reward for family photography in general. But I wanted to know more about what these young people thought -- if they felt that videotaped family records can do or was doing something that is somehow short-changed by still photography. For the purposes of this discussion, the main questions must focus on (1) the roles that personal photography play in the dynamic process of memory formation, retention, change and persistence and (2) a comparison of looking at conventional still photography and videotape imagery with specific reference to issues of memory. I was interested in their opinions and ideas about both contemporary nuclear family life and their projections to a time when they would be married and parents themselves. Results, in general, were quite surprising.

COMPARING STILL PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEOGRAPHY. My first objective was to explore links between perceptual differences of conventional still photography and videography and the relationship of these perceptions to thinking, imagination, and, in turn, memory. It was very important to hear how the teenagers in this study understood and evaluated videotaped recordings, especially when they captured family life or events and activities with their friends. So I start with a sampling of comments that articulate this issue in a clear way.

In discussions about the "best parts of videotape," teenagers repeatedly told me that they valued video records because they presented a complete sense of "being there" -- the videotaped life was the closest thing to actually being there. In other words, the quota of verisimilitude was very high. In one example, when I asked ANDY (age 17) "Is there anything special about video?", he responded:

A: The only thing special about it is that you can sit down and watch it like a movie, I mean you don't have to sit there flipping through pictures, and it's moving, it's almost like life, 'cause you know you've been there, so it's...

RC: Um hm, so it's almost like life, is that [what you mean]? ... and that's pretty good?

A: Yeah. It's better than looking at a (still) picture because, you can look at a picture and, you know, say you can remember that, but I think that film brings more memories than pictures, still pictures.

RC: Does that mean you think it's closer to life? [AG: Yeah. Right.] .... It sounds like you're saying it's more realistic. [AG: Yeah.] And that's good?

Andy's characterization of videotaped records as very realistic was generally shared among the teenagers interviewed for this project. His claim that film/video "brings more memories" is quite telling and will be discussed more below.

However, there was much less agreement with his assertion about memories. When I asked TRUDY (18) why people seemed to like video so much, I heard the following:

"I think it's because it is so much better than [still] pictures. Well, I don't know if I like videotape better than pictures, I haven't really decided about that yet. But I think my mom likes it better because she can just like see the whole thing, like pictures you just take like, like seconds, like seconds out of it [the entire action/activity], you know. With a video camera, it's like you see the entire thing -- you hear it, you see it moving in front of you, and it's just like, it's basically, I guess, like as close as you can to actually being there." (emphasis added)

In this statement Trudy raises another possibility when she suggests that her mother may value the video records more than Trudy values the stills. With age, and fear of memory loss, videotape does supply more information and thus make it all easier. On the other hand, older viewers bring a lifetime of memories to the viewing and potentially can contribute much more than younger people.

And in other example, when I asked G.T. (18) to make some comparisons of still photography and videography, and what he thought was the main drawing card of video -- the most popular thing about videotape -- he stated: "Um, video is like a whole experience, you know, you get to see what you were really doing and how you really were..." (emphasis added)

In general, I heard endorsements of the theory that video cameras tell it "the way it is/was." In this line of thinking, color pictures do it better than black and white ones, motion pictures improve on still photography, and when color, movement and sound are all included, you really have the best the chance to duplicate, experience, and, indeed, re-live life. In other words, I have found strong expressions of what some authors have labeled "naive empiricism"; I have also heard statements that favor the relatively untutored belief both in the "copy function" of cameras and pictures and in the transparency of photographic media.

Fortunately, I feel, their thinking did not always settle here. While most teens in this sample felt that video images were as close to reality as they were going to get with camera-generated records, there was still some debate on the relative merits of this situation. How desirable or unwelcome is this sense of re-experience and/or of total recall?

In this regard, I began to hear these teenagers express some dissatisfaction with the feeling that "it was all there" -- it was as if too much was there. For instance, in one example, MARY (13) expressed her concern as follows:

"I don't know (laughter). It's [the video image] like that is the actual whole thing, the [still] picture is just like a representation of the it, like the flash of a memory of it, like 'oh, that was fine' you know, not like 'here's everything we said and did and like the whole thing.' .. It's fun, it's fine, I love [still] pictures though..." (emphasis added)

Mary was making a clear distinction between these two media. Her argument is headed in two important directions, namely (1) of a "less-is-better" point of view, and (2) of thinking that it is possible to become overwhelmed with the amount of data that is presented to viewers in video-form. At the moment, Mary has settled on a "less-is-different" perspective. In this case, it is not important that she failed to acknowledge how the video recording is also "a representation of it."

Other evaluative comments were given in direct juxtaposition to memory issues when I asked other teenagers to compare their perceptions of videotape and still photography. For instance, when I interviewed GEORGE (16) about the potential future of videotaped family records, I heard a hint of some important differences in the following statement:

"if you're thinking about how to better look at family pictures, I mean, it seems, I do think that prints are pretty much better, definitely better than looking at a picture on a computer screen or a television or looking at a video.... when I look at a print I try to remember that day or that event or scene -- yeah, kinda sets it (memory) off... I guess, organization-wise, I guess a computer could do that, I don't know, at [my] work [a photography store], I'm the shipper-receiver there, I always see the new stuff that comes in from Kodak, and this new CD thing, you know, [people say] they want to press this [collection of pictures] onto a CD so they could like use their CD player and press like picture number three or something and something pops up on the screen..." (emphasis added)

Here and in the following comments, we get more direct ties between medium and "memory instructions." By this I mean, family pictures presented in still forms seem to implicitly "instruct" viewers to think and remember in ways that are clearly different from the instructions that implicitly accompanied similar materials presented in video formats.

Other teenagers put their own spins on this relationship. Their own expressions emerged from the following discussions. When I asked ANGIE (15) if she felt home videotapes were a better way of looking at the family picture collection or the family's past, she made several very negative comments

"We have so many movies [videotapes] that we've taken that we never watch." And later: "It just seems like new and supposed to be really special, but it really isn't all that great..."

And later: "I don't prefer it [the video image], I think 'cause just having just the visual aspect [the still photograph] is totally enough to remember it, and it makes you remember more instead of just remember what the photo is of -- because you just look at it [the videotape image], I don't know -- it's just sort of a very superficial way of looking at everything -- you just concentrate on what's happening right then. Instead, when I look at a [still] picture of somebody, let's say someone I haven't seen in a long time or something, I think about everything I did with that person and everything that person said instead of that one movement which on video is usually quite unimportant in a home video, it's not like some -- it's just basic life usually." (emphasis added throughout)

Here I believe Angie is suggesting a theory of limited returns from the sound-motion-picture video-version of family life. She is expressing alternative ways of cognitively processing information from family pictorial records. Importantly, she recognizes alternative modes, and is being explicitly judgmental regarding the relative merits of each photomedia for personal use.

Returning to the comments G.T. made earlier, in which he began to make some comparisons of still photography and videography, after G.T. stated that "video is like a whole experience, you know, you got to see what you were really doing and how you really were," he added: "...with still [photography] it just draws your memory back to like the experience and you have to remember it. Whereas with video it shows you exactly what you were doing. I think still pictures make, let you use more of your imagination, you know, to remember, or more of your memory." (emphasis added throughout)

RC: Can you just say, what would be the advantages of stills -- have you thought about that? You said a minute ago that it makes...

G.T.: You can capture one single moment... yeah, that is an advantage. [RC: How? Can you say why?] (pause) I don't know -- just looking at the picture, for me it brings out a lot especially if I was there an' I'm looking at it, somehow it has some personal, like memory, like ah, a memory of a trip when I see it, and it's cool because it's all mental and it's all like, within me. And then when I'm watchin' video, it's more like, I don't know, I like pictures too -- it's just too... they're sorta the same feeling but different.

RC: Are you saying that when you watch videotape that it sorta closes down your memory a little bit?

RC: But the still picture makes your memory work? [G.T.: Yeah.] It somehow kicks in an activity that isn't there with videotape -- I don't want to put these words in your mouth -- but that's what I'm hearing you say. Is that correct?

First, I feel that G.T.'s comment that "It's all mental and it's all within me" is very revealing. He's not only willing to do some cognitive work in order to appreciate these sill photographic images, he is pleased to do so. I feel G.T. is expressing a sense of delight that is not experienced when using videotape to perform the same documentary and expressive functions at the heart of family photography. G.T. was saying that he actually had to use information stored in his memory ("all mental") to let these photographs contribute further to his memory. There is a strong sense that he, as a viewing participant in this form of communication, has to actively contribute something to make it meaningful. And this something is much more than what he needs to contribute to interpreting and appreciating the video version of similar pictorial family records.

G.T.'s other significant observation centers on his statement: "I think still pictures make, let you use more of your imagination... or more of your memory." His "make, let" phrase speaks directly to my idea of "medium instructions." These interviews were giving me ample evidence that home videotapes did not make viewers use either their imaginations or memories as much as they did when looking at still photographs. The "complete" nature of the material did not require them to go much further or do any additional cognitive work on the material, that is, other than looking/glancing at it.

SARAH (14) continues this line of thinking ("you don't have to think when you watch videotapes") by introducing an added dimension, namely the restrictive nature of the video image. She made several other important distinctions in the following exchange.

S: Still.... Also, videotape gets kinda boring after a while. Like still pictures, like they're like, you can look at them and you can like gather what you want. But videotape, like, you can't like, you can't really imagine anything about the situation, you know, not imagine but...

S: Yeah, with videotape, I don't know, with pictures, I think [still] pictures are more interesting... I used to love videotapes but after I've had it for a while I kinda like still pictures better.

S: Well you can remember it the way you feel fit to remember it, like if I want to remember it a certain way, that's probably the way I prefer to remember it. With videotapes are so, like, ... you don't have to think when you watch videotapes, it's just like, I don't know...

S: It's true -- like if I look at a picture, you know, it will remind me of the time and I can tell Mara (a girlfriend) and it will be funny, but -- if she were to watch the time [on videotape] it might be, she doesn't get a perspective, ...if I said this is when this happened to me, and she puts it [the videotape] in and watches it, you know it is not as enjoyable as for me to sit there with [a still picture of the same time]... you don't have contact with anyone -- if I were to sit there with Mara, you know, it's like friendship - she could add something to the picture and adding my comments, and adding my...

RC: I see. So Sarah you're saying that when people put on a videotape, people kind of have to be quiet while they're looking at it. [S: Yeah] But when you share a family album...

S: You're making a connection with people instead of just staring into a screen and just stopping.

In another interview, Sarah's friend, Mary (13) picked up on these ideas and expressed another problem. Mary felt that one problem with watching family life on videotape is that the images are too "self-explanatory" -- stills seem to promote more storytelling.

M: 'Cause I love, I love going to people's houses and asking them to show me, like I've seen every single photo album at Sarah's (a girlfriend and neighbor) house 'cause I love people to tell me stories about them, 'cause I love hearing stories.

M: Yeah 'cause then they think about things, and then they can [talk about them] an' add stuff. (emphasis added throughout)

Here, Sarah and Mary are contributing very significant observations. First, Sarah is saying that you do not really need to think when seeing videotape, meaning a particular kind of thinking. But she is also saying that the motion and sound of videotape actually can stop you from one of the most important features of personal photographs, namely letting you talk about the content and provide contextual details in thought or conversation -- information that makes the visual content of family pictures significant and indeed, interesting in the first place.

Second, and possibly more important, Sarah and Mary are critically addressing the social nature of visual communication. They are invoking an important principle of image mediated communication, namely that social factors (both real and imaginative) and cognitive issues must be considered together. This is all the more important in home mode materials -- they are meant to be shared, and they are meant to promote interaction. For instance, clearly one of the most important features of the still photographic print is its existence as a tangible artifact. It can be held and passed around; it can be physically and mentally shared with other people; it can be duplicated and actually given to small numbers of "significant others." This act is central to keeping, as Sarah suggests, people connected to one another, tied together in symbolic and socially significant ways. Mary implicitly makes a similar case based on functions of storytelling thereby keeping the oral tradition alive and well. Here is how home mode imagery contributes to the intricately woven fabric of social relations -- here is how personal pictures function as communication to integrate people, society and indeed culture.

Later, Sarah picked up on a third and closely related theme -- namely that still photographs are for all times: videotapes are for some times. She said: "The thing is that the videotapes that we have of our own family like, you can, I can look at pictures, like one photo album, I can look at it over and over again and it's interesting every single time -- but like you can only watch a videotape only so often before you get totally sick of it and don't want to watch it any more."

S: Yeah. We have this photo album in our house that has been around for the longest time -- I look at it all the time.... Whereas with videotape you watch it and don't want to watch it, you know, you have to be in the mood for video, and you never have to be in the mood for (conventional still) pictures.

RC: Is that right? Well you're saying some very interesting things that I haven't heard before -- these are important questions.

S: No, it's true, if it's a beautiful day out, you don't want to watch a video because video makes you kinda lethargic and lazy, an', but [still] pictures, you can look at any way. (emphasis added throughout)

Ironically, Sarah is claiming that the family album, chocked full of still photographs, is easier to look at than its videotaped counterpart. This feeling, I believe, is going in the opposite direction of popular beliefs that video is making everything easier.

And finally, LYNNE (18) expressed these themes in other, equally significant ways. Specifically I want to call attention to her comments on too-much-reality of videotape. When I asked Lynne why she thought people did so much family photography, I heard the following:

L: To like document memories and to remember certain times an, an' like you can chart like the evolution and how you have changed, like it is so funny to look at pictures of me when I was little, then I would have never known what I looked like... Some of them are beautiful, like aesthetically they are really pretty, like the pose or the lighting, whatever. I don't know, like you can remember a vacation, like the people you met, a pretty sunset... and you can like capture those memories, I think, that's it at least for us.

L: You don't want them like too real a memory, I don't know (laughter). Well I don't know -- I guess I'm just not into video, like I don't sit down and see them -- that takes time.

RC: But you said, you made a little jest, a joke there and said, maybe that's a little too real. What did you mean by that?

L: I don't know (laughter). It's [the video image] like that is the actual whole thing, the [still] picture is just like a representation of it, like the flash of a memory of it, like 'oh, that was fine' you know, not like 'here's everything we said and did and like the whole thing.' ...It's fun, it's fine, I love [still] pictures though...

L: There's definitely a difference... It's one of those, an actual running recording, it's the exact same thing that you're sitting down and reliving -- if I was looking at a [still] picture, it would just like spark a little memory or, or I like I love beautiful pictures of my family and my friends an' it just likes me happy to look at them, an' to see them.

L: Yeah, well I just don't sit down and watch video things, but I love to flip through my old photo albums, you know, I look through them hundreds of times. I don't know, maybe like the video camera seemed never catch to on with my family that much because us kids hated it, when my dad would go around with a video camera, and they like go 'Oh, Dad!' And like they [the tapes] got really long, so...

RC: ... Well I am intrigued with this difference you have come up with. Stills do something for your memory, kind of give you bits and pieces,

RC: But, when you see motion pictures, maybe you're given a little too much, maybe you're given more than you want.

L: Yeah. And, sometimes it's fun, with video, like I have videos when they are fun, when people are doing funny things in front of the camera, an' it's entertaining, but... (emphasis added throughout)

One conclusion at this point is that these teenagers don't want all their information presented on a platter -- maybe the "give-it-to-me-now" strategy is acceptable and even preferred in other contexts of media presentation e.g. educational tasks, but not in personal and/or family contexts of home mode communication. They seem willing to do some work with and on their pictures, they seem willing to contribute something on their own to the maintenance of their memories. They are not willing to be couch potatoes in this regard -- they seem ready to take an active vs. presumed passive approach to the media system that will deliver this important information.

EXTENDED DISCUSSION: MEMORY RESEARCH. To enhance the significance of these findings, it remains to be seen where and how these preliminary results fit into a broader context of what might best be called "memory studies." We, as with most cultures, privilege good memories, memories that last, that are faithful and accurate. To be without memory -- as in a state of amnesia -- is a situation that needs some form of correction, remedy or cure; and to be without any family pictures or a family album is very unusual and, perhaps, somewhat suspect -- but also sad. Clearly fading memories and fading pictures are not good.

Traditionally connected with psychological interests, much of the academic research and scholarship in this area focuses on issues of long and short term memory; how different centers in the brain are used for the coding and storing of alliterative inputs, e.g. from sounds, from odors/olfactory, from word-images, from picture-images; etc. In this sense, there is work being done on linguistic memory, kinesethic memory, proxemic memory, etc. More recently we are finding new attention given to the influence of cultural factors on the construction of memory and/or the reconstruction of memory as time passes and as people subject themselves to different life circumstances. Other important topics relate more to questions of how popular memory and personal idiosyncratic memory are constructed and related to one another (Rubin 1986).

Of immediate relevance is how modern technology has been called upon either as an agent of memory formation or as an aide de memoire, in both cases, to facilitate human memory needs. Here we need to ask: what can be said of connections between photographic media and memory? Connections are both metaphoric and literal. For instance, there is certain privileging of, and envy of, people with "photographic memories." The literature also includes concepts of "snapshot memory" and "flashbulb memory" (Brown and Kulik, 1977; Neisser, 1982; Pillemer. 1984) -- dramatic moments in history when we seem to clearly remember the detailed circumstances of a particular moment, e.g. the instant we learned of President Kennedy's assassination., Good memories contribute in significant ways to the versions and renditions of life that are maintained, reified, and communicated within the oral tradition.

Taking these thoughts one step further, in addition to oral and written traditions, we are willing and generally grateful participants in a pictorial tradition -- a tradition that appears to take new forms every day. I will not make additional reference to the important roles played by drawing, painting, and other graphic forms done in public contexts. In modern times, needless to say, the electronic revolution has contributed in many far-reaching ways to the existence and prevalence of camera-generated imagery. This tradition includes both public and private manifestations, forms of media that find a meaningful place in our symbolic environment -- in systems of both mass communication and home modes of interpersonal visual communication. We are obviously most concerned with the latter in the research reported in this paper.

Zelizer has correctly claimed that: "In the contemporary age, memory has come to be seen as depending on an array of media technologies, from radio, cinema and computers to the printed press. Externalizing memory outside the human brain has thereby engendered diverse alternatives for its embodiment elsewhere" (1995: 233). I am suggesting that home media specifically collections of family photographs have been overlooked as a serious site of such embodiment.

Epistemological Dimensions. Much of the thinking revealed in my interviews with this sample of American teenagers might have been predicted. Their preference for understanding video as copies of reality and of "it being the way it actually was" makes a great deal of sense for a culture so well grounded in principles of pragmatism, positivism, and the ubiquity of naive empiricism. I have seldom heard such clear and unequivocal statements in support of the folk beliefs of technological supremacy and the transparent qualities of photographic apparatus (Sekula, 1975).

These points are all the more apparent at a time when the American televisual-viewing public receives daily lessons in what still and videotaped views of an event can and can not "say" (that is, show) about a specific historical event. For instance, we find increasing amount of attention given to digitalization in the newsroom, in daily newspapers and daily life (Mitchell 1992); there is great deal of commentary in our daily press and television news about the controversial use of videotaped records as evidence appropriate for courtroom presentation and subsequent decisions. The Rodney King incident is particularly relevant because the taped account was also a product of amateur home video.

High vs. Low Context -- Hot vs. Cool Media. Throughout these comments I am reminded of some theoretical observations offered by anthropologist Edward T. Hall, specifically to differences between "high context" and "low context" languages and, in turn, cultures (1976). In the former case, symbolic forms -- linguistic items, forms of movement (including gestures, expressions) and, by extension, "vidistic"/visual ones -- carry most contextual cues necessary to make appropriate and competent interpretations. In contrast, low context implies that users (encoders and decoders, senders and receivers, photographers and viewers) must supply the contextual information to make it all make sense.

Ignoring questions of high and low context can result in family photographic forms being easily mis-classified. People are often reluctant to look at someone else’s family pictures -- think for a moment of cliché responses to looking at a relative’s or friend’s travel pictures. This reluctance may be based on a simplistic reduction grounded in a sense that ‘once you have seen one, you have seen them all’ or "I have ones just like yours." This is a high-context evaluation, one in which too much is taken for granted. But what really counts is what can not be seen -- the fact that many families may have snapshots of a pet dog or cat is much less important than what each pet dog or cat means to members of each family, e.g. where they got the pet, the pet’s name, habits, tricks and even demise. The information that some viewers (family members) bring to the image, surround it to make it personally meaningful. In short, the low-context quality of these visual artifacts is what really counts.

The teenagers in this study seem to be making just this point with an added touch in reference to videotaped family records. They are saying that the still family photographs are low context and that these pictures are appreciated and even favored because of this. They, as viewers, take a delight in filling in the context to make the pictures meaningful as they were meant to be. But, in contrast, these same teenagers understand and treat videotaped family images more like high context artifacts; meaning that the images are providing all the necessary information to viewers to make the images meaningful. In a sense, less is better.

Another way of explaining or interpreting some of the ideas and comments cited above is to relate them to some slightly dated thinking by the late media theorist Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan is relevant because he was trying to connect ‘that which is given’ to ways ‘the given is taken’ (to borrow from constructivist philosopher Nelson Goodman) while comparing human participation on both sides of the mediated information (1964). Readers will recall that McLuhan endeavors to categorize types of media in terms of "hot" and "cool." With hot media receivers have less cognitive work to do because it is "high definition" and so much is supplied; on the other hand, viewers have to work harder with "low definition" cool media because they have to fill in and contribute additional information, and, in this sense, work harder. In these contexts, cool media are more participatory than hot media.

From comments in this study, we seem to be witnessing a series of reversals and transpositions. The teenagers I have quoted are enthusiastically treating the still family photograph in ways that are parallel to how McLuhan was talking about the television image -- an electronic medium, a cool medium, one that requires the viewer to exert energy "to fill in the dots." This participation appears to be the real drawing card of having the family history recorded in still photographs, and, in turn, serve memory needs better. On the other hand, the videotaped family record falls into line with what McLuhan meant by a hot medium -- a version that provides lots of data/dots, which, ironically, is closer in this project to still photographic forms. A lot of the cognitive/interpretive work has already been done, and this, I feel, is what G.T. was saying in his comments cited above. Thus while not behaving as couch potatoes, in a passive model of behavior, the teenage respondents in this study have exhibited some fascinating features of being arm chair theorists, but in active ways, representing a significant re-positioning in the mediascape living room.

CONCLUSIONS. One conclusion is that McLuhan's theoretical framework was contextually naive. In retrospect it seems ahistorical and mass media-centric and, in turn, ignored and/or denied the possibility that alternative media contexts -- both in terms of production and consumption -- could result in different cognitive positionings and strategies of interpretation. Humans might be a little more complex than McLuhan anticipated -- humans may bring different interpretive schema or agendas to the viewing table -- and second, cultural variables may override certain premature reductions of both media alternatives and indeed human diversity. Just as we see media develop through time, so we must accommodate the possibility that media can change temperatures through time following McLuhan’s metaphor. In other words, history and generations of viewers have important roles to play.

It appears that the young people in this modest study have developed their own implicitly realized theories of relationships between certain image media and memories. Some of the most exciting findings in this project have come from the teenagers' comments on how they appreciate, interpret, and compare family pictures. Two models of thinking about pictures and, in turn, of memory have emerged. Each seems to be stimulated by and attached to a different pictorial medium, though some intra-medium variation was suggested. Several teens felt that still photographs and videotape provoked different ways of thinking -- different ways of relating to what was being shown (or being looked at) in family pictures, and, in turn, to different ways of remembering.

There is a general sense that memory is much more often a reconstruction than a duplication or a reproduction, more of a work-in-progress than a xerox copy. This principle aligns well with some contemporary thinking about photographic communication. In both cases, we are asked to focus attention on human constructive abilities or, what I have elsewhere called, "the construction business." This perspective emphasizes change and a dynamic rather than static process. We must expect memories and pictures to change -- both in terms of how people make meaning. Consider how the "same" photograph can change through time -- the meaning and significance of a picture changes as it is read, interpreted and appreciated in different ways when a viewer is 10 years old and when the "same" viewer is 60 years old. The point is, of course, is that seldom is anything the same. This orientation seems to take primary attention away from matters of neurology with relation to memory and away from technology with respect to photography. Attention is re-directed to a dynamic model of meaning in relation to memory based on constructive, creative and adaptive qualities of human thinking.

Finally, I am suggesting that family photography might provide memory studies with a new focus. If "in between one’s head and the world ... is a repertoire of different agents of mediation--media that help us to remember", and if memory studies "assume that evidence of the past exists in everyday life--wedding celebrations, clothes, gestures, household artifacts, reputations, art exhibitions, public memorials, and television retrospectives" (Zelizer, 1995: 232), family photograph collections should be included (Chalfen 1991). Thus in addition to studies of individual memory and social or collective memory, I am curious about one of the in-between points, for instance, family memory. Home media, including snapshot collections held in old shoe boxes, family albums, small reels of home movies and now cartridges of home videotapes provide us with new field sites and new opportunities to explore relationships between camera-generated images and questions of memory retrieval processes, ways of assessing memory such as recall, recognition or even re-learning, or, as cited by Zelizer, the use of memory to shape belonging, exclusivity, social order and community (1995: 227). The teenagers interviewed for this project have proved to be active players in the maturation of a fresh sense of communicative competence in light of an expanding mediascape. My conviction is that we have much to learn from them.

Anonymous
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Anonymous
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