Dear Reader
First of all, thank you for being here again, and I hope you are well. It’s now very much Autumn, I’m back to school and things - fun things, interesting things and ideas things, are flying towards me from many angles.
Thank you also for your responses to the last Fragments, My Heart Is A Map Of Streatham. It means a lot to know that some of my words are resonating. :)
In today’s letter, I want to share a little game that I play with myself and my archive sometimes. The game involves inputting any 4 or 5 digit number into the search function of either my Lightroom catalogue1 or my computer to see which corresponding digital image files are found. Sometimes it’s a favourite number like 0013 for example, sometimes dates of significance, sometimes numbers of no significance.
I like doing this because most of the time it brings up images that I’ve completely forgotten about, or alternative versions of previously published or printed images. Many are blurred, or just not that great. For some reason I hang on to those ones anyway. Maybe I’m an innate memory hoarder. Maybe all photographers are.
On the subject of memory, this game is of course a basic collaboration with a machine (my machine) and its digital memory bank, which also happens to represent part of my human memory bank. Yet this game acts as a much colder way of recalling memories which are for me and probably most people, normally triggered by things like location, scent, sound, conversation and framed photos at my Nan’s house.
I find it both useful and fascinating because it not only reminds me of people, places and moments I’m not otherwise thinking about, but also offers a sequence of images / memories that are way more random than any I’d consciously assemble myself.
It is perhaps closer to the way in which dreams are an assemblage of memories and information, the difference being that dreams usually have a narrative, even if that narrative is completely bonkers, whereas the sequences generated by this game often don’t beyond being linked to me.
Today, I inputted the number 1303, which is the first part of my birth-date. Here are five fragments that were found:
I’m choosing not to say too much about them. This is because a recurring theme for me this week has been sequencing and story-telling methodology; on Monday I was fortunate to hear Dr Ben Burbridge give an excellent talk as part of Photology in which he described constellations such as Jeremy Deller’s The History of the World as a method of linking moments or memories. And today, the excellent Lewis Bush, in a MA lecture about story-telling, talked about the layers of explicit, implicit and symbolic meaning within a photograph or series. How lucky I am.
As result, I’ve been inspired to consider how YOU might approach a reading of these fragments of my archive with no implied context beyond authorship and filename. Right now I’m thinking that in today’s world of Google and websites and Wikipedia and endless media and opinion, giving little context is in fact a generous thing to do. Just one author, one number, five images and space to play.
A Creative Invitation!
So with this in mind, I’d love for you to think about or contribute your own readings of, or narratives about these images or files.
This might mean considering if and how they might they be linked beyond sharing the same author and 4 digits. Would you re-sequence them and or give them a new title? Caption them? Do they speak to you on a personal level? If you’re a digital photographer, can you play the game with the same number [1303] and if so, what does it bring up for you?
Tell me here, or by email, or tag @georginaccook or #fragmentsnewsletter on Insta.
I look forward to hearing back from you.
Take Care,
Georgina
Lightroom is a software program used for processing and organising virtual copies of digital images