The Art of the Moment: How Long Does the Memory of a Photograph Last?
26 • 03 • 25Benedek Szabó
Discourses on photography attribute several functions to the medium, including artistic self-expression, documentation, experimentation, illustration, and the preservation of memory. This latter function, however, is discussed less frequently and appears even less often in public discourse, although in modern art history the relationship between photography and memory plays a decisive role in shaping both the creation of images and their afterlife. The photographs preserved in family albums help safeguard the memories of individual lives, while archival image material can bring entire historical periods to light. What accounts for the particularly close relationship between photography and memory? Can photography’s memory-preserving function survive in the age of digitization? What conditions transform an image into a mnemonic object, and what happens when these conditions cease to exist?
When photography was first invented, the new technological achievement was regarded as a tool for capturing reality—one that recorded the appearance of the external world through complex optical and chemical processes. In its early stages, photography offered only one alternative for image-making, as the medium itself was still developing. The technology required special conditions, and the time needed to produce a photograph was significantly longer. As a result, objects moving in front of the camera could not yet be recorded. This technical limitation explains why people are often absent from early photographs.[1] Consequently, early photography was initially restricted to certain (static) views; nevertheless, the restriction did not prevent photographs from fulfilling a mnemonic function from the very beginning.
Moreover, during this period—and toward the end of the nineteenth century—photographs began to include human figures. In these images, the human figure—and especially the face—takes center stage, its distinctive character something photographers were particularly eager to capture. Portraiture did not assume its prominent position in early photography by chance. From some perspectives, the most significant value of photography lies in its role in the cult of remembering distant or deceased loved ones. This aspect is crucial not only for memory but also for determining the photographic image’s status as an art object and its exhibition value.[2]
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Louis Daguerre: A Boulevard du Temple látképe, Párizs, 1839. Fotó:
Photography’s ability to preserve the depicted object or person—that is, its closer relationship to its subject than that of engravings, paintings, or lithographs—can be illustrated from several perspectives. From a theoretical standpoint, photography maintains a more intact relationship to what it depicts because it has truly “encountered” it. The mnemonic character of photography is therefore best understood through the relationship between the finished image and its subject. The photographic process creates a kind of planar imprint that is not merely the result of interpretation or stylized representation but a physical trace of reality itself. As such, the photograph stands in an ontological relationship with what it depicts.[3] Such an image can preserve traces of the past precisely because it stands in a real relationship to what it depicts—that is, to the scene that was photographed—and this relationship is always concrete and unique. The photographed object had to be physically present in front of the camera; otherwise, the image could not have been captured. Light-based representation is inconceivable without the actual presence of the object—that is, the visual referent.[4]
The presence of the referent also becomes central when approaching photography’s mnemonic character from an art-historical perspective. Photography can be most closely aligned with imprint-based processes, since both preserve their original referent through direct contact. An imprint, after all, is nothing more than “the creation of a lasting mark on a surface,”[5] that is, the establishment of a relationship between a body and the material[6] that retains its trace. Art-theoretical descriptions of such technical processes reveal that the operative moment of the process itself remains concealed: human intervention does not directly shape the image at the moment of formation. This phenomenon is equally true of imprints and photographs: the image is not shaped by human hands but by the body itself. This understanding corresponds closely to what several members of the Frankfurt School described as the “optical unconscious.”[7] The concept highlights the material's inherent memory, suggesting that it becomes saturated with memories. Photography thus becomes a mnemonic object that, through its subject or referent, reminds the viewer of the person, object, or stories associated with what appears in the image. Through photography, it becomes possible to “step back in time” in search of the depicted referent.[8]
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Fotó: Mai Manó és Tsa: évszám nélkül © Bánkuti András gyűjteménye
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Fotó: Nadar: c. 1865. "Revolving" self-portrait
The revolution in digital technology, however, fundamentally disrupts the assumptions underpinning historically oriented approaches to the subject. The anachronistic nature of memory can best be understood through the concept of the imprint, which corresponds to photography in that both procedures typically record their subjects as negatives, later converted into positive images. Although positive imprints and direct-positive photographic processes are also known—requiring no such conversion—these cases nonetheless underscore the structural parallels between imprint and photograph. In digital photography, however, this correspondence essentially breaks down. Digital images often exist as virtual representations lacking physical presence, while such presence remains a fundamental premise of both the imprint and analog photography.
As a result, the number of images can expand almost without limit, leading to countless images being lost in their overwhelming abundance. The experience of physically encountering a photograph—holding the paper in one’s hands, examining it in detail—can be an integral part of the mnemonic retreat that proves photography’s original memory-preserving nature.[9]
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Fotó: Erik Kessels: 24HRS in Photos
The digitization—and simultaneous virtualization—of images can therefore cause photographs to lose their mnemonic value. In a rapidly changing visual environment, images can easily be lost or overlooked. Even if they are later rediscovered, they are unlikely to offer the kind of experience that a creased photograph—capable of opening the doors of memory so wide—can provide.[10] The relationship between photography and memory, one of the medium's most fundamental characteristics, is becoming increasingly uncertain in the contemporary image world. The mass production of digital images increasingly overshadows the mnemonic, object-like quality rooted in the materiality of analog photographs. The digital transformation has not only transformed the technical aspects of image creation but has also profoundly influenced the mechanisms of memory itself.
As we have seen, the function of photography in preserving memory has emerged alongside ritualized practices. It therefore follows that, under new circumstances, the establishment of new rituals could strengthen the relationship between memory and photography.
[1] Földényi F., László. A guillotine hosszú árnyéka [The Long Shadow of the Guillotine]. Jelenkor, 2023, pp. 98–99.
[2] Benjamin, Walter. L’œuvre d’art à l’époque de sa reproduction mécanisée (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction). Gallimard, 1991, pp. 149–150.
[3] Cf. Bazin, André. Qu’est-ce que le cinéma? (What Is Cinema?). Éditions du Cerf, 1958, pp. 9–10.
[4] Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by Richard Howard, Hill and Wang, 1981, pp. 60-61.
[5] Didi-Huberman, Georges. *Hasonlóság és érintkezés* (*Similarity and Contact*).
Budapesti Kommunikációs és Üzleti Főiskola, 2013, p. 23. Originally published in French as “Ressemblance et contact.”
[6] Ibid. p. 27.
[7] Benjamin, W. p. 163.
[8] Barthes, R. p. 54.
[9] ibid. pp. 52-57.
[10] ibid. p. 54.
