Artist Profile – Annette Kuhn ‘Family Secrets – Acts of Memory and Imagination’

Annette Kuhn is a British film scholar who wrote a book entitled  ‘Family Secrets – Acts of Memory and Imagination’ This book explores the meaning and stories behind family archives and culturally criticises and analyses something that we all own and cherish… the family photograph! In doing so, she uses her own family photographs as examples and unearths stories of her past that represent her perspectives of memory.
Kuhn began her book by saying that all families have secrets, and in her terms “A family without secrets is rare indeed” (Kuhn, A. 1995, Page 1) Secrets, in this respect, is not a term for gossip told in private to a friend. But instead is a term to describe family stories which are kept concealed, instead of broadcasting them to the world. It is these stories that when being an outsider looking at these photographs, you are eluded to their background, however then are forced to find meaning for yourself. In some respects, pictures bring secrets to light, and Kuhn acknowledges this when talking about her own family secrets within her own photographs. She said that her objective is to “unravel the connections between memory, its traces, and the stories we tell about the past, especially – though not exclusively – about the past of living memory” (Kuhn, A. 1995, Page 3)
Annette kuhn

Kuhn discusses the act of memory or remembering frequently within her book. Old photographs hold so much history and are “potentially interminable” in the way that questions can always be raised and there is always more to look into. Kuhn establishes that this act of remembering might not be directly linked with our own physical memories. “What interests me more is how it is that images and sounds of from, or referring to ‘the past’ – from a past indeed that precedes my own lifetime – can feel so familiar ; and how this sense of recognition might connect with the activity of remembering, at both a personal and a collective level.” (Kuhn, A. 1995, Page 107) This bringing the found, or discovered  memories into the forefront of the mind. Creating a connection that can only be achieved using this family archive of photographs.

After Annette Kuhn revisited her own family archive for the production of this book she offered six theses to concisely conclude the lessons she learnt from her memory work. These are: 1. Memory shapes our inner worlds 2. Memory is an active production of meanings 3. Memory texts have their own formal conventions 4. Memory texts voice a collective imagination 5. Memory embodies both union and fragmentation 6. Memory is formative of communities and nationhood.

Collectively, through Kuhn’s discoveries I have understood that there are many different approaches we can take when looking at the family photogrphaph. There also many different outcomes that the family photograph can produce. But it is all about how we contextually look at the image. Thinking about the photograph as a part of the family archive. And how this is crucial to the remembering of the past. Whether yours or someone else’s. This connection is still evident.

When looking at this in relation to my own work, I can try and tell the story, but still keeping an element of it secret, as if not to give the whole story away and revealing it to the world. But rather to let the viewer decide and gain their own connection with the piece and let the connection with the family archive become a vital element of the photograph. Almost to the extent that they will believe it is their own and connect with it on a more personal level.

© Kirstie Wilkinson

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