Photography and Memory in Nostalgia

I thought Frampton’s (nostalgia) raised some interesting questions on the photograph's relationship to memory. Immediately, by putting the physical destruction of the photographic medium as the central visual element of his film, Frampton already demonstrates the mortality and profound materiality of the medium. Indeed, by only showing the photograph after describing it and then immediately burning it, Frampton seems to underpin this materiality as the very essence of the photograph in general. Rather than allowing the viewer to “believe” in the reality of the world within the photographs, by establishing the pattern of burning them, the viewer comes to see the photographs as anything but eternal; instead only fleeting traces of the true memory just conveyed by the audio. In this respect, the photographs in the film gain an eerie, personal feeling, as if the viewer were actually glancing at a materialized memory of the film's creator, a piece of personal history temporarily restored in the phantom image of the doomed photograph, soon to return to the invisible realm of memory. In this respect as well, the burning of the photographs seems to symbolize the futile nature of memory and nostalgia in general and the unattainable desires that accompany them. As soon as the photograph appeared, I often found myself racing to take it in as fast as possible, find every detail that had just been described, absorb it and commit it to memory before it would inevitably disappear. In this respect, the photographs are analogous to memories, instilling futile desires to see them and understand them, even to inhabit them to some extent despite the fact that they will soon go up in smoke.