Memory and photographic image :
Revisiting Siegfried Kracauer’s essay Photography with La Jetee
In this paper, I will focus on the distinctions and relations Siegfried Kracauer draws between memory, memory image and photography in his essay Photography, and show why, for him, it is important to maintain such distinctions and remain critical to photography. Then, by using Chris Marker’s short film La Jeteeas a typical experimental practice that integrates fragmented images to create new memory, I will show how Kracauer’s idea can be embodied in media objects, and reconcile Kracauer’s seeming self-paradoxical claims on photography and visual culture.
In photography, Kracauer emphasizes the differences between the nature of memory and that of photography, as “memories are retained because of their significance for that person”and “photography grasps what is given as a spatial and temporal continuum.” Comparing to photography’s record, “memory’s record is full of gaps” spatial-temporally: memory is not a spatial continuum because its “image” is fragmented and re-constructed based on the object’s significance to the person; memory is not a temporal continuum since “memory does not pay much attention to dates” that it skips time and place objects from different linear points of time on a same “surface” based on their importance to consciousness. However, from the point of view of memory, photography is partly consists of “garbage” irrelevant to the representation of consciousness. Memory-image can be understood as the visual component of memory; one shouldn’t confuse memory-image with memory itself, since memory is the multi-sensorialtotality that consists of visual data and that of other senses.
How does photography separate from memory-image, thus with memory in general? Does it prevent memory-image from functioning, or does it serve as a gateway to enter the dimmed areas of human remembrance? For Kracauer, in short, the liveliness of photography is determined by the consciousness that recognizes it, and “the more consciousness withdraws from natural-bonds, the more nature diminishes.”By “nature,” Kracauer is referring to the irreducible actual experience or history that the photography represents, as exemplified in the example of the grandma, in which the strength of the bond between grandma’s photography and children is determined by their actual memory of her. Photography, though itself merely a visual representation functions according to spatial-temporal relations, has the potential to evoke one’s memory of an object. However, photography can also be the death of memory, as “the flood of photos sweeps away the dams of memory.”In circumstances when memory precedes photography, photography acts like a reminder, a gateway toward the relating piece of memory across time and space; in situations when photography precedes memory, or there is no accessible previous memory that consciousness can relate photography to, photography acts like a strict manifestation of the real that the spatial-temporal relations it depicts dominate one’s imagination of history. Even in the first circumstance, photography has, to a certain extent, a destructive potential of memory since photography might replace memory’s integrity, turning it into a deviant of itself. To conclude, photography for Kracauer, in general, is the death of memory and its memory image, though it has a little potential to evoke the actual memory.
Comparing to photography, Kracauer seemed to believe in the potential of film, as he says “the capacity to stir up the elements of nature is one of the possibility of film.”Now, I will turn to Chris Marker’s short film La Jetee to analyse how this potential is realized. La Jetee, with its use of moving image in contrast to still image(photography), disjunctive editing and seemingly paradoxical narrative, blurs the line between memory and imagination, breaks the linear way of seeing history and offers a rich understanding on the intertwining relations between photographic image and memory.
La Jeteeis an experimental short film by French new wave director Chris Marker. It is a 30 minutes long “narrative slide show” consists mostly of still images, or photography, with an exceptional 8 seconds moving image. The story is set over the ruins of the third world war in Paris. The fascist regime won the war and reigns Paris with terror. The protagonist, a imprisoned man, is selected for a time travel experiment to obtain precious resources for the regime from past and future. The experiment operates on specimen’s bonds toward their memories and abilities to imagine----the reason that the man is selected since he has incredibly strong attachment to his childhood memory of a woman’s face and a man’s death at the airport. The film’s narrative time focuses on the course of the man’s investigationinto his memory, or perhaps imagination, under heavy surveillance of theexperimenters. The man revisits his childhood memories and relives his life with the woman of his dream. As he dives deeper into his memory-dream with her, the experimenter increases the dosage of shots. After the man is sent back and forth into the future and finally has the chance to be with the woman, he witnesses, or experiences, his own death.
The moment I want to focus on lasts from 18’50’’ to 19’50’’. The first 40 seconds of this moment is an assemblage of ten different photographs of the woman lying on her side in sleep. The camera takes the point of view of the man, as if he is lying before her and looking at her closely. These photographs’ varied camera distances and different duration times suggest the camera, and so the man, sees her in a intimate motion as he himself is lying on their shared soft bed. The fade-in and fade-outs between the photographs also contribute to the feeling of motion, though we know clearly that this is merely an assemblage of still images. When we reach to 19’34’’, the one and only 8 seconds moving image in the entire film appears--the documentation of the moment the woman opens her eyes. This is a crucial moment. If all the still images(photographs) before this point represent the man’s memory-images, this piece of moving image is trying to suggest that memory itself bursts out from this singular moment, breaking the shackle of any representation and shows its pure and clear form.
However, if we take a step back, reflect on how we arrived at this thought and think of the question “does photography generate memory, or does memory generate its photography,” we will see the underlying gap within this claim. From the base level, we are looking at nothing else but a sequence of photographs taken by Chris Marker. When Marker was interviewed by Libérationon the production of La Jetee, he said “It was made like a piece of automatic writing. I was filming Le Joli mai, completely immersed in the reality of Paris 1962, and the euphoric discovery of “direct cinema” (you will never make me say “cinema verité”) and on the crew’s day off, I photographed a story I didn’t completely understand. It was in the editing that the pieces of the puzzle came together, and it wasn’t me who designed the puzzle. I’d have a hard time taking credit for it. It just happened, that’s all.” Marker’s response suggests without doubt that for him the photographs precede his own memory in La Jetee, as the narrative was “pieced together” after the photographs were taken. However, once the narrative is established, it gains a life of its own. The man in the film generates the memory-images from his own memory, and the photographs that the viewers see are direct representations of his memory-images created by the film maker. In this sense, the originality of the man’s memory is desired by both the viewers and the film maker, as the film maker creates the montage of still images for the man’s memory to dwell on and reveal itself. The man’s memory structurally exists at the crossroad of this “co-desire” and reaches its extreme clearing when the moving image occurs, as if the man’s memory of the woman is so strong that it pierces through the photographic surface and illuminates itself. Thus, the relationship between memory and image(photography) is not a simple causation; instead, as exemplified by La Jetee, they are closely intertwined as the desires of the film maker, the viewers and the man unite to nurture the liveliness of the man’s memory towards to woman of his dreams through images’ mediation.
How is a sequence of photographic montage different from a singular photograph in terms of memory? For Kracauer, the singular photograph prevents memory from functioning because it is impenetrable by the actually history that it dominates what is understood as real, and it “attempts to banish the recollection of death”to grant eternity to the object. Photographic montage, with its motion and fleeting nature, is beyond one’s grasp and desire to possess the object. Photographic montage also has the potential to embody what the object feels like for one. For example, one can tell the “the significance in memory” emphasized by Kracauer based on each photographs’ duration times. In this moment of La Jetee, the duration times for each photographs are clearly disproportionate that it shows how the woman appears within the man’s memory as time lapses. The woman appears through the mediating effect of photographic montage can never be grasped to its totality, just as memory is a intimate connection to an object instead of eternal possession and banishment of death.
Kracauer is against historicism that seeks “complete mirroring of the temporal sequence”to recreate all meaning of history. La Jetee’s use of disjunctive editing style juxtaposes different time and space to create abrupt viewing experience, breaking the linear progression of time and history. At 19’40’’ of the film, right after the moving image of the woman opening her eyes, the image suddenly cuts to the cold and horrifying face of the officer. The contrast is so intense that the viewers might even experience a few seconds of disorientation, just like the man closes his eyes in disbelief right after that shot. A second ago the man, as well as the viewers, was spending sweet time with the lover of dream decades before; a few seconds later the man, as well as the viewers, is sent back in this cold and damp underground cell, being tortured like a dog. The juxtaposition of images in contrast here is also a juxtaposition of different time and space. Similar editing strategies are used throughout the film to create a non-linear temporal space, just as memory functions on its significance to consciousness instead of spatial-temporal relations. In this sense, La Jetee stands with Kracauer and provides an alternative practice against historicism.
In the last section of photography, Kracauer overturns his argument on photography to its Hegelian synthesis by saying that “the warehousing of nature promotes of confrontation of consciousness with nature,”and photography provides “the reflection of reality that has slipped from it.” Paradoxically, yet convincingly, the apocalyptic scenario generates its own immanent redemption. La Jetee, is the one of the astonishing outcomes of that reflective tradition Kracauer foresaw. La Jetee recreates human memory poetically on top of the spatial-temporal logic of photography. By using disjunctive editing and mixing the moving images together with still images(photography), Chris Marker revives the man’s memory image and memory, offering an striking anti-historicism practice. The fact that La Jeteeis set in a post war apocalypse is worth noticing. Under this imaginative apocalypse, memory, together with the human body it is bound to, is exploited as a resource. However, the man’s, the film maker’s and the viewers’ bond and desires towards the fading memory, mediated by creative use of images, penetrate through the iron shell of surveillance and control. Perhaps in apocalyptic scenarios, the bond to memory is our only connection to history and the oppressed dream. La Jetee, with its excellent use of experimental techniques, elevates photography to a height to contain memory under its static surface, whether from the imaginative future or reminiscent past, living up to Kracauer’s prophecy.
