Exposed memory

It is a perennial duck-rabbit ques on as to whether we see the photograph or the thing photographed – always the one in the other, of course, but it o en seems as if the material and the formal cannot be held in simultaneous percep on. Beyond the rela on between document and documented, however, there is also the ques on of whether we “see” what is not visible in either; that is, what framing and exposure themselves render invisible, even as it is necessarily implied (as, for instance, the presence of the person taking the photograph and the person, formerly, developing and prin ng it). Although both processes were essen ally automated, and the camera itself is an automated “eye”, we s ll invest in ques ons of the “subject” (in all senses) regarding photography. What, then, might the “evidence” of photography be in rela on to “place”, to placing both seer and seen? As a technical metaphor of and for “memory”, what does this technology expose (both literally and metaphorically) concerning memory poli cs; not least, when adopted by ar sts dis nct from journalists or historians? In this presenta on, I will explore a ques on of “exposure” (or perhaps “déjà vu”) in a photograph taken in Terezin, ostensibly by both Sebald and myself, tracing a par cular gure of light against a set of “backgrounds” (architectural, historical, narra ve) that o er di erent contexts for the sense of what may be implied by the image.