The photograph reaches out: uses of photographs of the dead in China

Abstract

This paper addresses the photograph’s ‘transmission’ – from camera to wall, to book, to hand, to screen – and its ‘transition’ from ‘that-ness’ to ‘this-ness’, from mnemonic to amnesic. Specifically, it examines the role of photographs of the dead through a field study of two elderly women, Madam Wang and Madam Sun, living in Chengdu city, Sichuan, China. The paper deploys Barthes’ 1982 book Camera Lucida to interrogate their use of mostly physical photographs kept in albums and displayed on walls. The paper questions how photographs are conceived as primarily artefacts of representation in Camera Lucida, positing ‘this-ness’ to capture how physical photographs support an extension of the past into the present. The paper also, through positing ‘reach’, argues for an extension of Barthes’ notion of punctum to capture not only the sentimental effects of photographs, but also their ability to express elapsed time, exert moral obligation and play an active role in family life. Through a close examination of Madam Wang and Madam Sun’s use of photographs, physical photographs are presented as having agency: incorporating dead family members into ‘small family’ (小家庭), and holding extended family together, despite absences due to death or migration.

Keywords:

• photography
• Barthes
• China
• death
• this-ness
• reach

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Mark Rouncefield for his support and mentoring. I also appreciate the informants’ engagement and time and for their permission to use their words and photographs in this paper. Special appreciation goes to the reviewers and Jeremy Fernando for their helpful comments. Very special appreciation goes to my co-editor Alfred Montoya and my wife Yang Fang for all their support and hard work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Professor Alan Dix discussed these terms with me in Lancaster in 2007. I was, at the time, not receptive to more ‘theoretical’ perspectives of photography. I often reflect on that conversation and am grateful to Alan for it, even if I didn’t appear so at the time!

2 In ‘contemporary photographs and photography’, I am primarily concerned with the ubiquitous use and availability of photographic technologies and not with digital/analogue dichotomies. I also acknowledge the connection between digital cameras and photographs on one hand and Internet services enabling circulation on the other.

3 http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2014/zk/html/Z0609E.htm.

4 I have reported on this fieldwork in Graham & Rouncefield, 2007, 2008, 2010. However these reports have only theorised the ethnographic findings in a limited way. In addition, for the first time I am presenting the exact words of informants as translated after the fact as opposed to the translation performed by the translator at the time of the interview.

5 http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2014/zk/html/Z0205E.htm.

6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_China_by_population.

7 http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2014/zk/html/Z0206E.htm.

8 I have reported Madam Sun’s similar conversation about dead family members elsewhere (e.g. Graham & Rouncefield, 2010).

9 Here, I am indebted to Jonathan Grudin’s paper ‘The Computer Reaches Out: The Historical Continuity of Interface Design’. Although he does not formally define the term ‘reach’ in this paper, he described how then new user interfaces were ‘reaching out to individuals who were less inclined to adapt to it’ and how ‘In a manner somewhat similar to a growing child, the computer is reaching out into its environment’ (page 266).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Dr Mark Rouncefield’s Microsoft European Research Fellowship (Social Interaction and Mundane Technologies) and a Nokia University Donation (MobilePhones as Probes, Props and Prototypes For Life Change).