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Abstract
Memories are increasingly shaped and shared through the media, in particular visual media such as photography. However, it is not just the images that allow for memories to enter our individual and collective identities: the latter take shape in the mediation of the past through images. In other words, the very act of selecting, storing, and sharing visual data has an impact on the way the past is recalled and identities are reconstructed in the present. What happens, though, when photo albums go digital, and private snapshots become available to all? This article analyses the collective sharing of a series of photo albums of the 1977 student movement in Bologna, on the social networking site Facebook, in 2011. It explores how the collective (hi)story of the 1977 generation is reproduced online, why this specific medium was so successful in reconnecting these people thirty-five years later, and what the impact is of digital media and social networks on the reconstruction of collective identities in the present.
Notes
1 The quote was taken from a comment on Enrico Scuro’s photo album ‘On the Road’ on the social network site Facebook, posted on 11 April 2011.
2 Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory. The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 2. Landsberg introduced the term ‘prosthetic memory’ to highlight the mass-mediated nature of present-day memories.
3 Roland Barthes, ‘The Reality Effect’, in French Literary Theory Today, ed. by Tzvetan Todorov (Cambridge: CUP, 1982), pp. 11–18; Isabella Pezzini, ‘Television and Terrorism in Italy: Sergio Zavoli’s La notte della Repubblica’, in Imagining Terrorism. The Rhetoric and Representation of Political Violence in Italy, ed. by Pierpaolo Antonello and Alan O’Leary (London: Legenda, 2009), pp. 77–87 (p. 80).
4 Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory, p. 19, my emphasis.
5 Paul Longley Arthur, ‘Saving Lives: Digital Biography and Life Writing’, in Save as ... digital memories, ed. by Joanne Garde-Hansen, Andrew Hoskins and Anna Reading (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 44–59 (p. 46).
6 José van Dijck, Mediated Memories in the Digital Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), p. 2.
7 7 April 2011, ‘I Gorilli Quadrumani’ album.
8 References will be made to the launch of the book on 17 January 2012 in Bologna, which included interventions by local La Repubblica journalist Michele Smargiassi, historian Luca Alessandrini, and Scuro himself.
9 Audrey Leblanc, ‘De la photographie d’actualité à l’icône médiatique: “La jeune fille au drapeau” devient “la Marianne de 68”’ (6 January and 9 March 2010), http://culturevisuelle.org/clindeloeil/2010/01/06/de-la-photographie-dactualite-a-licone-mediatique-%c2%ab-la-jeune-fille-au-drapeau-%c2%bb-devient-%c2%ab-la- marianne-de-68-%c2%bb-12/; http://culturevisuelle.org/clindeloeil/2010/03/09/de-la-photographie-dactualite-a-licone-mediatique-%C2%AB-la-marianne-de-68-%C2%BB-22/ [accessed 1 June 2011].
10 Barbie Zelizer, ‘The Voice of the Visual in Memory’ in Framing Public Memory, ed. by Kendall R. Phillips (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2004), pp. 157–86 (p. 159).
11 Ann Rigney, ‘Plenitude, Scarcity and the Circulation of Cultural Memory’, Journal of European Studies, 35.1 (2005), 11–28 (p. 20).
12 The visual reference in Passerini’s title is lost, however, in the English translation as ‘autoritratto’ is substituted with ‘autobiography’: 1968. Autobiography of a generation. Observation by Dr Jennifer Burns during the seminar ‘1968 and the value of oral history’, University of Warwick, 23 February 2011. Luisa Passerini, Autoritratto di gruppo (Firenze: Giunti, 2008); Lucia Annunziata, 1977. L’ultima foto di famiglia (Torino: Einaudi, 2007).
13 For example 1977. L’anno in cui il futuro incominciò (2002), co-edited by former protest leader Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, and Alice è il diavolo. Storia di una radio sovversiva (2002), which focuses on the alternative radio station Radio Alice, the mouthpiece of the student movement.
14 Tano D’Amico, Volevamo solo cambiare il mondo. Romanzo fotografico degli anni ’70 (Napoli: Intra Moenia, 2008).
15 Similarly, a series of nostalgic musical initiatives took place during the anniversaries of 1997 and 2002, bringing some of the mythical (left-wing) groups and singers of the 1970s back on stage.
16 Gilberto Veronesi (ed.), È accaduto a Bologna. Gli anni di Marzo (Bologna: Minerva Edizioni, 2008).
17 Fred Davis, ‘Nostalgia, Identity and the Current Nostalgia Wave’, Journal of Popular Culture, 11.2 (1977), 414–24 (p. 414); Susannah Radstone, The Sexual Politics of Time: Confession, Nostalgia, Memory (London: Routledge, 2007).
18 Leo Spitzer, ‘Back through the Future: Nostalgic Memory and Critical Memory in a Refuge from Nazism’, in Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, ed. by Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe, and Leo Spitzer (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College, 1999), pp. 105–19 (p. 90); Nadia Atia and Jeremy Davies, ‘Nostalgia and the Shapes of History: Editorial’, Memory Studies, 3.3 (2010), pp. 181–86 (p. 182).
19 Michael Pickering and Emily Keightley, ‘The Modalities of Nostalgia’, Current Sociology, 54 (2006), 919–41; Davis, ‘Nostalgia’, p. 417.
20 Davis, p. 419; Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1984).
21 Dominic Strinati, An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture (London/New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 238–39.
22 Annette Kuhn and Kirsten Emilo McAllister, ‘Locating Memory. Photographic Acts. An Introduction’, in Locating Memory. Photographic Acts, ed. by Annette Kuhn and Kirsten E. McAllister (New York: Berghahn, 2008), pp. 1–16 (p. 1, p. 11).
23 Annette Kuhn, Family Secrets. Acts of Memory and Imagination (London: Verso, 1995), p. 14.
24 Annette Kuhn, ‘Memory Texts and Memory Work: Performances of Memory in and with Visual Media’, Memory Studies, 3.4 (2010), 298–313 (p. 298).
25 See also Martha Langford, ‘Speaking the Album. An Application of the Oral-Photographic Framework’, in Kuhn and McAllister, pp. 223–46 (p. 223).
26 Susan Sontag (1973) cited in José van Dijck, ‘Digital photography: communication, identity, memory’, Visual Communication 7.1 (2008), pp. 57–76 (p. 60).
27 Annette Kuhn, ‘Remembrance’, in Family Snaps. The Meanings of Domestic Photography, ed. by Jo Spence and Patricia Holland (London, Virago, 1991), pp. 17–25 (p. 23).
28 Patricia Holland, ‘Introduction. History, Memory and the Family Album’, in Spence and Holland, pp. 1–14 (p. 3).
29 Holland, pp. 13–14.
30 ‘1977, un anno della nostra storia’, la Repubblica.it (n.d.), <http://www.repubblica.it/speciale/2007/dossier_1977/> [accessed 30 May 2011].
31 Martha Langford, Suspended Conversations. The Afterlife of Memory in Photographic Albums (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008), p. 20.
32 This web page is no longer accessible.
33 Van Dijck, Mediated Memories, p. 38; Kuhn, ‘Memory Texts and Memory Work’, p. 298.
34 Andrew Hoskins, ‘Introduction’, in Garde-Hansen, Hoskins, and Reading, pp. 1–21 (p. 7).
35 ‘Chi sei Marianna del ’77 bolognese?’, la Repubblica Bologna.it (6 March 2007), <http://bologna.repubblica.it/dettaglio/chi-sei-marianna-del-77-bolognese/1278206> [accessed 30 May 2011].
36 Marita Sturken illustrates the phenomenon of ‘reenactment’ with a similar example in her analysis of the way the famous photograph of the three fire fighters raising an American flag at Ground Zero, after the 9/11 attacks, re-enacts another famous photograph featuring American soldiers raising a flag at Iwo Jima during World War II: Marita Sturken, Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), pp. 188–89.
37 Longley Arthur, ‘Saving Lives’, p. 52.
38 Holland, ‘Introduction’, p. 1.
39 Langford, Suspended Conversations, p. 5; Langford, ‘Speaking the Album’, p. 224.
40 Langford, ‘Speaking the Album’, p. 224.
41 Gaia Giuliani, ‘Il ’77 non fu solo terrorismo, ma le nostre risate fadcevano paura’, la Repubblica.it (20 April 2007), <http://www.repubblica.it/2007/01/speciale/altri/2007dossier1977/quelli/quelli.html> [accessed 30 May 2011]. The self-reflexive nature of this form of recollection is also evident in the type of photo that was chosen, a group portrait which does not depict an historical key moment of 1977, i.e. the clashes of March 11, but which places emphasis on the personal lives of people in those years.
42 Van Dijck, Mediated Memories, p. 171.
43 Kuhn, Family Secrets, p. 14.
44 Kuhn, Family Secrets, p. 41.
45 Joanna Garde-Hansen, ‘My Memories?: Personal Digital Archive Fever and Facebook’, in Garde-Hansen, Hoskins, and Reading, pp. 135–50 (p. 143).
46 Holland, ‘Introduction’, p. 3.
47 See Andrea Hajek, ‘Tracce urbane di un conflitto permanente. La memoria pubblica dei fatti di marzo ‘77 a Bologna’, Etnografia e ricerca qualitativa, 3, (2010), 329–48.
48 Luca Alessandrini, intervention during book launch on 17 January 2012.
49 Enrico Scuro, personal communication (email), 1 June 2011.
50 ‘I ragazzi del ’77’, Città del capo radio metropolitana (17 February 2011), <http://radio.rcdc.it/archives/i-ragazzi-del-77-71590/> [accessed 31 May 2011]. The title of the album was drawn from the common denomination of the young men called to arms during World War I, the ‘ragazzi del ’99’ (i.e. born in 1899) who came of age at the beginning of the war. Enrico Scuro, intervention during book launch on 17 January 2012.
51 12 February 2011, ‘Ricordi televisivi’, photo 1.
52 ‘I ragazzi del ’77’, città del capo radio metropolitana (17 February 2011).
53 Comment by Scuro, 5 February 2011, album 1. The September conference was a collective initiative by Radio Alice and the former left-wing extra-parliamentary group Lotta Continua.
54 Annette Kuhn, ‘A Journey Through Memory’ in Memory and Methodology, ed. by Susannah Radstone (Oxford-New York: Berg, 2000), pp. 179–96 (p. 103).
55 29 April 2011, album 2, photo 146.
56 13 February 2011, Album 1, photo 1; 16 February 2011, Album 1, photo 1; 5 February 2011, Album 1, photo 1.
57 15 March 2011, Album 1, photo 188, my emphasis.
58 19 February 2011, album 1, photo 28.
59 This sense of belonging was reinforced during a reunion at a local university pub on 11 March 2011, the proposal for which was launched by the owner of the pub in a comment on the first album.
60 5 February–4 March 2011, album 1, photo 34.
61 15 February 2011, album 1, photo 45.
62 Enrico Scuro, intervention during the book launch on 17 January 2012.
63 No date, album 2, photo 200, my emphasis. In the second album, Scuro admits to his curiosity to learn people’s names, which is also illustrated in his frequent invitations to people to tag names into the photographs.
64 8 February–12 March 2011, album 1, photo 19, my emphasis.
65 See for example: ‘quella borsa mi e’ molto familiare...’ 14 May 2011, album 2, photo 89.
66 11–21 February 2011, album 2, photo 151. The Pankreas was a popular underground music bar in Bologna, in the late 1970s, and Gli Skiantos is a famous local musical band which originated in that period.
67 5 February 2011, Album 1, photo 1.
68 19–22 March 2011, appendix 2, photo 191.
69 Langford, Suspended Conversations, p. 20.
70 10 March 2011, album 1, photo 198. In another comment to a similar photograph someone simply reproduced the slogan, without any comment, as some sort of direct discourse: ‘Gui e Tanassi sono innocenti, siamo noi i veri delinquenti!’ 10 February 2011, album 1, photo 200. Luigi Gui and Mario Tanassi were two Christian Democrat ministers who had been involved in the Lockheed scandal. The slogan is obviously ironic.
71 8–14 February 2011, album 1, photo 45.
72 15–18 April 2011, album 1, photo 62. Via Mascarella is the street where Lorusso was shot dead, on 11 March 1977.
73 8–20 February 2011, album 2, photo 82.
74 13–14 March 2011, album 1, photo 22.
75 26 February 2011, album 1, photo 1; 12 March 2011, album 1, photo 2. The idea of nostalgia was, however, contested, during the launch of the photo book Scuro drafted from the online photo albums. Pino Caccuci, intervention during book launch on 17 January 2012.
76 11 February 2011, album 2, photo 200, my emphasis.
77 Van Dijck, ‘Digital photography’, p. 63.
78 This in order to avoid persecution for any illegal activities on the basis of visual evidence. Michele Smargiassi, intervention during book launch on 17 January 2012. Smargiassi covered various anniversaries of March 1977 for the local edition of La Repubblica.
79 Van Dijck, ‘Digital photography’, p. 60.
80 Peter Braunstein, ‘Possessive Memory and the Sixties Generation’, Culturefront, Summer (1997), 66–69.
81 22 February 2011, appendix 1, photo 1; 31 March 2011, appendix 2.
82 19 February 2011, appendix 1.
83 Yuqing Ren, Robert Kraut, and Sara Kiesler, ‘Applying Common Identity and Bond Theory to Design of Online Communities’, Organization Studies, 28.3 (2007), 377–408 (p. 380).
84 Martha Langford cited in Annette Kuhn, ‘Photography and cultural memory: a methodological exploration’, Visual Studies, 22.3 (2007), 283–92 (p. 285); 11 February 2011, album 1.
85 Astrid Erll, ‘Concepts of Cultural Memory Studies’, (2006). Paper delivered in a Master Class session at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands (this file is no longer accessible). See also Sturken, Tourists of History, p. 75.
86 Rigney, ‘Plenitude’, p. 18.
87 15 March 2011, ‘On the Road’ album; April 2011, appendix 3.
88 10 February 2011, album 2.
89 It seems that the overlap of the commemorative events was simply a result of miscommunication, the organizers of the two events not being aware of each other’s plans.
90 10 February 2011, album 2.
91 6 February 2011, album 1, photos 124–125. On 13 March 1977, Minister of Internal Affairs Francesco Cossiga sent the army out to regain control over the university zone in Bologna.
92 Michele Smargiassi, intervention during book launch on 17 January 2012.
93 4 April 2011, appendix 3.
94 Michele Smargiassi, intervention during book launch on 17 January 2012.