#1 - Kracauer

In "Photography," Kracauer argues that memory and photography create almost opposite images: memory produces images that are crafted out of those things that are personally significant to you while photography simply "grasps what is given as a spatial (or temporal) continuum" (50). Or in other words, "from the perspective of memory," Kracauer writes, "photography appears as a jumble that consists partly of garbage" (51). Moreover, Kracauer is convinced that "truth can be found only by a liberated consciousness which assesses the demonic nature of the drives" and that "all memory images are bound to be reduced to this type" (51). For Kracauer, "the last image of a person is that person's actual history" (51).

(Pardon the lengthy paraphrasing.)

I found this an interesting, if flawed, analysis of memory. Why Kracauer puts so much faith in the preservation of 'truth' through the seriously flawed institution that is memory, is, in all honesty, baffling. His comment that "Great historical figures survive in legends that...strive to preserve their actual history" is more than dubious. In fact, it seems the exact opposite to me. Legends seem more concerned with creating advantageous versions of histories for groups in power than anything else. Truth is not born from some general idea about a historical figure. If there is a truth at all, it is born out of critical study. For instance, I don't think it's unfair to say that, for many, Christopher Columbus is simply the legendary historical figure that 'discovered' America. However, if we look past this legendary veneer, we learn quite quickly that he was less an intrepid explorer (the legend that is, apparently, "striv[ing] to preserve [his] actual history") than a ruthless murderer bent on enslaving the indigenous populations that he found. If a photograph buries a person's history "under a layer of snow," what, may I ask, does conventional and uncritical understandings of history bury one under, an avalanche?

(Of course, some of the things that he says about memory in the beginning are possibly true, but from there he derives wild conclusions.)

Kracauer's analysis of photography is perhaps less flawed. A lot of photographs do have a lot of "garbage" in them. However, this does not mean they all do. I would mention Henri Cartier-Bresson's idea of "the Decisive Moment." If there is an art to photography, perhaps it is in the choosing of the less garbage filled moments to crystallize, in physical form, the memory images Kracauer talks about.

One final thought: Kracauer seems very interested in the relationship between the internal and external, his beef with photography being that it can only represent the external. What exactly are Kracauer's assumptions about the internal and external?