Photographs are central in order to keep memories that could be vanished or forgotten thus, photo elicitation through a specific photograph is a very constructive and valuable method to get the most genuine form of information through memory. Indeed, Annette Kuhn explains in her chapter: “Photography and cultural memory, a methodological exploration” that photographs, especially family and personal ones are a central tool to understand social and cultural uses and instrumentalities of memory and photo elicitation becomes a way to investigate ‘ordinary photography’. (Kuhn, 2007:284)
The photo I have chosen is a picture of my friends in Rome, Italy, in 2012 during our early teenage years.Being interviewed on a photograph that I have chosen was a great experience, I felt like I could talk and express myself more rather than someone asking me specific questions.
Photo elicitation gives more freedom to the interviewee. Memory work is much different than a photo elicitation interview, it is different because the photo asked is relevant to the interviewees memory, which means it has much more emotional potential than a news report picture.
Indeed, this photo made me remember the times when I was in middle school in Italy hanging at night with my friends who are the same nowadays and we still hang out together and keep in touch, I had forgotten about this picture, indeed it is one of the first one I have posted on my Instagram account and I really enjoyed looking at this again and using it for the In-class task, I did not had the same feeling while doing the photo elicitation task in week 2 because it is a photo that I have chosen and triggered something in my memory.
Photo from my personal archive, September 2012.
Sources:
Kuhn, A. (2007). Photography and cultural memory: a methodological exploration. Visual Studies, 22(3), pp.283-292.