The Object camara, photograph and date book

 Reflection

Through-out these essays, the object has been examined in multiple ways, yet the datebook, the camera and the photograph all share a common ground; memory. The datebook forms a connection with the individual like no other, holding inside its pages a written portrait of its owners identity, an honest representation of the self. The photograph, evokes memory by allowing the viewer to look back into the past, and and be compared as a more visual version of the datebook itself. An finally the camera, mimics the brain in some instances by storing within it brain collections of images that evoke memory. However the instant camera is different, it ejects the images before they have properly developed, leaving the machine itself, separated from the creation it has just birthed. This is significant, as it creates in tandem to the image a negative copy, showing events defamiliarised from the true scene we try and conjurer within our minds. This negative image appears almost ghostly, and creates an anti-view that seems to belong to a parallel realm; one of fiction and myth. As I compare these three essays, I notice points to challenge, why do people need to use old photographs to define themselves in the world, are they so void of originality that they need the photographs to write their identity, or is it just the comfort of knowing where they came from, and how they fit into the order of things. If a Polaroid is smeared, does that change our engagement with the past?  If a page from the date book is missing, and the owner cant remember the events on that page, does that erase them from history? I feel as through I need to investigate further into these objects before I can discus any further...