Good Intentions: Remembering through Framing Photographs in English Homes

ABSTRACT

This paperlooks at the context of materialised memories–the consumption and framing of photographs. Ethnographic workin British homes unearthed diverse ways of consuming and displaying photos. We propose that these modes of framing mirror the relationships within and surrounding the household, andlocate themin short-hand time frames characteristic of the socialexchanges appropriate to those relationships. Through framing, people flag their collective good intentions to conduct relationships appropriately over time, without capitulating either to the risk of over-imposing nor of neglect. As a counterpart to Gell's and Strathern's analyses of art and social efficacy, our work illustrates the capacity within British family culture to materialise intention around an efficacious social object, constructing intention as a quality of persons not objects while retaining the agent-like properties of photographs.

Keywords:

• Material culture
• photography
• remembering
• intention

Acknowledgments and Methods

The research for this study was conducted at and by Hewlett Packard Laboratories, Bristol, with Tony Clancy of Lancaster University, and comprised two stages as part of a broad study on memory and media. Rewriting was conducted with the assistance of a grant from the Irish Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (irchss). Many helpful comments were made by members of the Global Dinner Group, who know who they are. The broader study is reported in Frohlich (2004).

We spent a period of three months, March–May 2002, conducting ethnographic fieldwork among families to talk about photos and music in their homes. Initial contact was with two interest groups, firstly a craft group involved in making photo albums as a hobby; and secondly a recorded music society, who meet weekly to listen to a music compilation which one member selects and presents. We networked onwards from these initial people to meet others with whom they share memories through photos or music, meeting nine households in all, criss-crossed by relationships involving the sharing of photographs. Families were primarily middleclass. This was not intended, but appears to have arisen from the practice-oriented definition of the field, focusing on the hobby groups.

The work involved 13 individuals, including 5 couples (married or unmarried), profiled as follows:

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