You might know that I am interested in the relationship between photographs and memory.

There was a time when people thought of memory as “capturing” the past as photographs claim to. We’re not so naïve now, about either process.

Millicent, Margaret Forster’s fictional “ordinary woman“, writes in her diary:

It’s become so impossible to believe myself in love any more, (…) and yet I so desperately want to be. I strain and strain to remember how it was before the war. It is like looking at a photograph which is proof in a way of happiness having existed but it is flat and has no life and has to be taken on trust.

What is it that charges our photographs with meaning? Millicent’s comment suggests that looking at photographs can challenge our memory, can say: “This happened, even if you don’t remember it.”

I don’t remember this moment, but I seem happy enough - in fact, I seem to have everything I need. The picture provides evidence of a happy past, and adds to any autobiographical narrative I might produce, because this is something outside my memory.

Has that moment helped to formulate my identity, even though I can’t remember it?