Re-memory 2015
Photographs / Re-photographs

The concept for the work was inspired by recent cognitive neuroscience studies (Bridge & Paller 2012) showing that “Every time we recall an experience, we change it, and so we tend to remember what we recalled last time. That information we retrieve gets incorporated into our original memory” (Bridges 2015).  This paper shares many theories with a paper written more than 100 years previously. In Matter and Memory Henri Bergson discusses three processes regarding memory; pure memory (AB), memory-image (BC), and perception (CD), of which none can occur without the others.

I have produced work which shows a visual representation of these theories. In Bergson’s theory the event is A, the original photograph/memory is B, the last recalled memories are C, and the existing/newest memory is D. In other words each re-photograph is a recall of the last memory making the final layered image the current version of the memory.