Cultural Memory, Essay Example

The Implications of Digital Photography for Cultural Memory

In his famous book 1984, author George Orwell presents a vision of a future world where every piece of information can be manipulated and controlled by the totalitarian government of Big Brother. Two countries can be at war on day, and the very next day –according to the government- they have never been at war. As the book’s main character writes in his diary, “he who controls the past controls the future.” Big Brother’s reach is so vast that the government has created a world where facts simply have no meaning, and the only reality is whatever the government says it is. Winston Smith is a part of this process, as he is responsible for removing government figures and other people from photographs once they have fallen out of favor with the government. Once he removes them from pictures and history books, they are gone forever, disappearing permanently into the “memory hole.” In the world of 1984 there is no cultural memory, no shared collection of memories that shape how people remember the past. Memories, like the books and pictures in 1984, simply no longer exist.

The scene that Orwell describes, where Winston Smith removes a man from photographs, newspapers, and history books, was famously done in real life in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Joseph Stalin had the image of Nikolai Yezhov cut from a photograph featuring Stalin and other government officials, and the before and after versions of this photograph have become quite well-known. Like Bob Brother, Stalin used this technique to shape the cultural memory of the public. This effort may have been crude compared to modern standards in digital photography and editing, but it demonstrates how easily such a thing can be done, how long it has been happening, and how far-reaching its effects can be.

In a 2008 New York Times article, writer Alex Williams examines the phenomenon of people editing family photographs and other personal pictures to virtually rewrite history. Ex-husbands are removed from vacation photos, absent friends are added to wedding pictures, and unflattering portraits are given more hair, less body fat, better lighting, and other improvements. Williams notes that these manipulated pictures can even shake people’s memories, convincing them that someone really was at the wedding, really did not go on the cruise, or really was that thin, tall, and handsome. This demonstrates the power of photographs and other visual imagery to shape not just individual memories, but collective memories. If the photograph shows Uncle Joe at the wedding, then he must have been at the wedding.

This phenomenon has broader implications, of course. It is no longer just Stalin who can remove people or change photographs. Digital photography and editing makes it possible to manipulate images in virtually any way imaginable. Author Fred Ritchlin addresses this in his essay “From Zero to One,” and discusses how journalists and news photographers are able to present historical or newsworthy events in ways that do not necessarily reflect accurately on those events. Ritchlin proposes a set of protocols for such photography that would indicate whether or not a photograph has been substantially altered, but notes that such protocols have not been widely agreed upon or adopted.

There are potential upsides to this as well, as Ritchlin points out. While “the digital destabilizes the photograph as a faithful recording of the visible,” writes Ritchlin, it also opens up a whole world of new possibilities. Discussing this in the context of tourism, Ritchlin asserts that the wide availability of digital photography and editing frees the tourist from the obligatory need to be photographed in front of clichéd tourist sites, and allows him or her to instead “the chance to evolve into a traveler.” It may be easier to manipulate images, but it is also easier to capture new and different images. The risk in all of this is that if no images can be trusted to be “real,” then the collective cultural memory that is shaped by photographic records can no longer be trusted. As we move farther and farther into the digital age, it will be necessary to find new ways to remember the past.