All people cherish their memories. A happy life is reflected through great memories. Memory, however, is not as simple as it seems. Although defined by Merriam-Webster as, “the power or process of reproducing or recalling what has been learned and retained especially through associative mechanisms”, the power to reproduce and recall is out of our control, only to be controlled by our extremely complex brains. Memory, as perfectly stated in “Waltz with Bashir”, by Ari Folman, is, “dynamic. It’s alive” (1). Photographs have major affects on people’s memories, as illustrated in “Regarding the Pain of Others”, by Susan Sontag, “to remember is, more and more, not to recall a story but to be able to call up a picture” (Sontag 263). Sontag expresses some of the difficulties photographs can cause for our memories. All photographs, such as the captivating photographs created by famous photographer, Sebastiao Salgado, allow us to remember.
Photographs do more than just simply allow us to remember. They alter our memories, too. Photographs can even hinder our memories, as discussed by Sontag in “Regarding the Pain of Others”, memories of photographs are unproblematic until the photographs overshadow other memories, “the problem is not that people remember through photographs, but that they only remember the photographs. This remembering through photographs eclipses other forms of understanding, and remembering” (Sontag 263). Photographs’ interference with our memory is a captivating idea. Although it is impossible to detect, I am positive that certain pictures of my childhood have changed my memories of my childhood. I often try to remember the first house I lived in as a very young child, but all I can truly remember is the way the house looked, which is refreshed in my memory by a photograph of the house. Perhaps I have no true memories of the house, our memories often play tricks on us. In “Waltz with Bashir”, created by Ari Folman, one of the main characters finds that his memory has been mysteriously altered. His therapist refers to a famous psychological experiment regarding memory that says a great deal about memory’s ability to change as a result of photographs, the subjects in the experiment, “remembered an experience they never had” (1). This occurred as a result of the fact that, “if we suddenly find some details missing, our memory helps us out by filling in the gaps with things that never happened” (1). Clearly, photographs have bizarre affects on our memories. The new remembering and understanding that photographs elicit is common in misery photographs taken by Sebastiao Salgado.
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Salgado’s photographs help create and change people’s memories. His photograph of the oil spill, Workers Place a New Wellhead, Oil Wells, Kuwait, is no exception. This photograph contains an extremely depressing view of the harrowing effects of the oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico. Two workers are working in the gray, dirty disaster that is the spill. This photograph was projected all over America, to be seen by all. Salgado’s image changed the way in which I regarded the spill by providing my mind with a picture to fit with the stories. Workers Place a New Wellhead, Oil Wells, Kuwait became the image I picture in my mind when thinking about the spill. People’s memories of the oil spill were deeply affected by the intensely emotional photograph of the spill. The image not only created a memory of the oil spill for many, but also overshadowed previous memory of the spill for those who already had existing memories. Sontag explains how the oil spill image affects people’s memories, “photographs help construct- and revise- our…past” (Sontag 261). This image, like many others, has become common in our society and has therefore shaped the memories of many people. There are many famous photographs that are commonly known in our society, images that are decidedly important, “photographs that everyone recognizes are now a constituent part of what a society chooses to think about, or declares that it has chosen to think about” (Sontag 261). These photographs usually consist of inspiring events, such as Martin Luther King’s speech, that provide people with positive memories. Societies use images like these to declare what they collectively believe to be important, society’s “ideologies create substantiating archives of images, representative images, which encapsulate common ideas of significance and trigger predictable thoughts, feelings” (Sontag 261). In this fashion, people’s memories and understandings have been greatly transformed as a result of influential photographs. Photographs can also influence their audiences by misleading them.
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War photography is extremely influential, but often misleading. Whether images are taken before, during, or after events have occurred can severely change the way the event is regarded, because the images vary greatly. In Salgado’s photograph of the dead bodies, the image is taken after the events have occurred. This ghastly image appalls and sickens me. There are roughly eight dead bodies in the image scattered in a road and by a truck. This gruesome photograph that demonstrates the casual and acceptable death, evident by a bystander’s apparent unconcern, is so powerfully shocking that it “haunt[s]” (Sontag 263) me. The picture caused me to reflect on how relatively safe our society is and to be grateful. This photograph simply shows the scene after the events, the images of the scene before or during the events are unseen. This lack of knowledge caused by photographs being taken after the deaths, or posthumous, creates a dilemma for the audience’s memories. Salgado’s photograph, like many others, “is…of something posthumous; the remains, as it were” (Sontag 261). This creates a dilemma, because the photographs of the remains are understood and remembered by the audiences as the legitimate event, which is false. The ability of photographs to misinform their audience is uncanny. This photograph fails to display anything other than the posthumous scene. Salgado’s image is misinforming, because the events of the image are unknown, the dead bodies could have been killed in a fight over drugs, for example, or perhaps while patriotically trying to save their country. Since the events of the image are unknown, the photograph creates an unfair understanding and remembering for the audience. Photographs of the concentration camps, like Salgado’s photograph, are just the remains, the “newsreels of the concentration camps are misleading because they show the camps at the moment the Allied troops marched in” (Sontag 261). Salgado’s picture, like the newsreels of the concentration camps, could depict something entirely different from what was normal. As a result of the tendencies to be taken after events, war photographs, along with the memories they construct or revise, are often illegitimate.
Even if photographs are legitimate, memories that result from them may not be. Photographs that are deemed significant by society create, as Sontag would state, ‘“memories,’…that [are], over the long run…fiction” (Sontag 261), because they are simply recognized, valuable photographs in society that completely lack understanding or true memories. Photographs do, however, provide people with the ability to reference the past. Museums aid people by displaying, “photographs [that] lay down routes of reference, and serve as totems of causes: sentiment is more likely to crystallize around a photograph than around a verbal slogan” (Sontag 261). Photographs in museums eclipse understanding and memories that are beneficial to the audience. Photographs in museums and Salgado’s photographs are taken with purpose. One reason for the creation of memory museums was to, “ensure that the crimes they depict [would] continue to figure in people’s consciousness. This is called remembering, but in fact it is a good deal more than that” (Sontag 262). The photographs in the museum provide the audience with proof of events in hopes of preventing unjust events like such from occurring in the future.
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Salgado’s minefield photograph displays injustice. In this photograph, Dispute between Serra Pelada Gold Mine Worker and Military Police, Brazil 1986, many poor, helpless miners, wearing tattered rags and living in apparent squalor, watch a violent dispute between one of the miners and a militant, who carries a gun. The revolting miner is grasping the end of the militant’s gun as the rest of the miners watch intently. This photograph reminds me of slavery in the United States. It is clear that the one, white, man holding the gun is unfairly overpowering the poor, unprivileged workers. Dispute between Serra Pelada Gold Mine Worker and Military Police, Brazil 1986, like photographs of slavery, should be displayed in museums so that, “people [can]…visit-and refresh-their memories” (Sontag 262) in order to understand and remember the unjust actions of the past to prevent any future reoccurrences. Salgado’s photographs and photographs of slavery have similar affects on viewers, they surmount other forms of remembering and understanding to provide their audiences with true memories.
Sebastaio Salgado is an extraordinary artist who successfully shares understanding and memories through his art. Art, such as Salgado’s, is often in museums so that many people can understand and remember what the art teaches. War photographs are inordinately prevalent, Sontag admits that, “the very notion of atrocity, of war crime, is associated with the expectation of photographic evidence” (Sontag 261), but many things, not just photographs, can eclipse our other understanding and memories. Consider your memories of anything. Close your eyes and picture your memories, what do you see? You see your memories, fake and real, without any way of deciphering the truths from the fallacies, “your memories could be an amazing thing” (1).

Works Cited
Salgado, Sebastaio. Dispute between Serra Pelada Gold Mine Worker and Military Police, Brazil 1986. 1986. Photograph. Brazil.

Salgado, Sebastiao. Workers Place a New Wellhead, Oil Wells, Kuwait. 1991. Photograph. Kuwait Epilogue, Kuwait.

Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. Print.

Waltz with Bashir. Dir. Ari Folman. Perf. Ari Folman. Bridgit Folman Film Gang, 2008. DVD.
Web. (1)

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Posted by Shaz at 2:04 PM