The family photo album is an embodiment of collective memory.  These photographs, which we cherish so tenderly, and think of as our own private memories, inadvertently reveal a collective nostalgia for a certain time or place. 

Christian Boltanski’s work presents us with a struggle to differentiate our own memories from the collective, in order to find a true sense of self-identity.  Album de photos de la famillie D., 1939-1964 (Photo album of the family D., 1939-1964)(1971) comes from a collection of ordinary family snap-shots Boltanski borrowed from his friend, Michel Durand.  Common to Boltanski’s practice he re-photographed 150 of them and took on the task of putting them in chronological order to reconstruct the family’s history.  He identified certain figures in the photos in relation to their position in the family ‘for example, he described the older man who appeared only at festive occasions as an uncle who did not live in the immediate vicinity.’ [3]   The photographs could be all that is left of the family after their death and Boltanski, prematurely maybe, is using them to create his own version of the story that will be left behind.

He found, however, that although these would be ‘evidence of their existence’ [4] after their death he did not learn a lot about the family from the photographs.

‘I realised that these images only proved witness to a collective ritual.  They did not teach us anything about the family D….but only sent us back to our own past.’ [5]

In any family ‘inevitable transformations will still be produced within: deaths, births, sickness, aging, slackening or increase of the individual organic activities of its members.’ [6]   These fundamentals allow us to compare ourselves to the family photos of others with ease.  The differences between other families and our own, however, give us an uneasiness.  It is with this uneasiness that we learn the most from the photographs.  Boltanski is commenting on a family that is very similar to his own, French and living within a similar time frame.  Although they may not give us substantial evidence to properly distinguish the relationships of family member or correctly arrange the photographs, they still give many clues about the wider network of the group or society they have lived.  

In the essay Camera Lucida Roland Barthes explains how photography ‘immediately yields up these “details” which constitute the very raw material of ethnological knowledge.’ [7]   Barthes is describing the way in which photography gives us an unedited representation of society.  The social clues in the photograph are in the details; the clothes, hairstyles, interiors.  Famille D places the family photograph in the network of society.

‘Memories evoked by a photo do not simply spring out of the image itself, but are generated in a network, an intertext, of discourses that shift between past and present, spectator and image, and between all these cultural contexts, historical moments.’ [8]   

The different way we relate to these photographs relate to the social groups to which we belong and the collective memory that exists within them.

Dexter Dalwood’s paintings are an embodiment of the images that present themselves within the collective memory, particularly in western culture.  Bay of Pigs is Dalwood’s representation of the US attempt to overthrow the Cuban government in 1961.  This haunting painting brings together the images the event brings to mind.  The water looks as if it has been dyed by bloodshed, the sky is grey and cloudy, the tropical plants have lost their appeal to the tyranny of man, it contains all of the classic elements from the scene of a war film.  We know, however that Dalwood, born in 1960, was not present at the ‘Bay of Pigs’ as it was the first year of his life.

‘Dalwood’s paintings stem from his own imaginings, enhanced by exhaustive research of eyewitness testimonies, biographies, available imagery and personal memoirs.’ [9]  

So he has used the appropriate information and his own imagination to give us a ‘visual documentation’ [10] of the event, using a pieced together effect to reminds us that what we are seeing is only an interpretation.

Similarly to Dalwood’s other paintings ‘Bay of Pigs’ lacks the presence of the figure.  The intention is clear, we are left with a scene that we can then persue with our own imagination and knowledge.

‘In reality we would feel incapable of reproducing all the events in their detail, the diverse parts of the tale in proportion to the whole, and the whole series of traits, indications, descriptions, propositions, and reflections that progressively inscribe a figure or landscape in the mind of the reader, which allow him to penetrate to the heart of the matter.’ [11]

Dalwood relies on our inherent relationship with collective memory to fill in the figures.  We already know the spaces, the imagery used is engrained within the collective consciousness [12] , the title is then the biggest clue.  Dalwood expresses his interest, ‘in the fictional space in paintings and how the imagination allows itself to occupy that space.’ [13]

In addition to memory, individual and collective Dalwood’s makes significant references to art history in his paintings.  At the bottom of Bay of Pigs, a Picasso painting appears, as if washed up on the shore.  The date taken from a Picasso paintings matches the date of the Bay of Pigs.  One description of this painting says ‘while the world is in crisis, Picasso is painting palm trees in Cannes.’ [14]   Apart from pointing out the self-indulgent nature of certain artists this gesture also suggests a flaw in the way art is used as a reflection on society and as a reliable source of historical evidence.  Art is by its nature, simply a series of interpretations, of images, that if successful become familiar and engrained in the collective consciousness.  In this way, Dalwood hints at the arbitrary nature of memory, the random fragments that come together to create a collective consciousness.

Although in opposing ways Boltanski and Dalwood are questioning the ways in which we relate to the past through images.  Boltanski provides us with the private image through which collective memory is revealed and Dalwood brings together the already formed collective images and invites us to find our place within them.  They also both reveal something in their work about the documentary nature of art, photography and other imagery, through the bringing together or exposure of memory documentation or historical evidence.

I am now going to focus on the relationship between art and documentation.  As I have already stated in the introduction, all art is in some way a documentation because is it part of the structure on which historical evidence is formed.

Many artists however, have responded directly to the idea of documentary within art.  Gillian Wearing provides us with a running commentary on different groups of people, mainly their confessions and taboos.  Tracey Emin presents us with a more autobiographical account of society, which like the Boltanski photographs, we then relate back to our own lives and also gives us an idea of her place in society, and our own.  This intention for the private to become universal is particularly predominant in the work of Gilbert and George.  All of their work is based on what they see, feel and accumulate within their immediate vicinity.  I recently went to see their retrospective exhibition at the Tate Modern which they had arranged in chronological order.  Walking from room to room you not only saw their development through the years but also the direct effect society of different time periods had had on their work. 

Of course photography and film in this century have been crucial to documenting the past.  Many photographers may see it as their duty to use photography for these means.  Martin Parr is fascinated by the working classes of the 1980s and spent many years photographing and documenting them.  Richard Billingham  gives us a different kind of family photo album, but like Boltanski’s it still gives us a sense of a certain section of society.   

Re-enactment and documentary often exist side by side, particularly when we think about television documentaries.  The artists I have previously referenced in this section, are or were involved with documenting the present, which in time becomes documentation of the past.  This is how art becomes so influential to the make up of history. 

Akin to television documentaries, artists who respond directly to the idea of documentary also use reenactment as a way of performing and visualising the past.  The most ambitious re-enactment to take place in the art world is Jeremy Deller’s Battle of Orgreave.  In 2004 Deller recreated the clash between the police forces and minors in the north of England in 1984, during the Thatcher years.  This was no ordinary re-enactment.  The re-enactment involved minors and police officers who had been a part of the original riot in 1984, and professional re-enactment groups usually involved with recreating wars from further back in time.