History Begins at Home: Photography and Memory in the Writings of Siegfried Kracauer and Roland Barthes

Abstract

The idea for this article arose following several instances of personal loss in my family that led to death becoming far less abstract for me. Even prior to these concrete triggers, however, which had forced me to rethink my ideas about death and memory, I was inspired by a story narrated during a dinner party in an Upper West Side New York City apartment. The hostess was a well-established television correspondent for an American corporation network, whose work entailed rushing to [End Page 19] hot spots all over Latin America to report on political and natural disasters. Opposite her sat a photographer who had just completed a project about ancient Indian altars in Latin America that had survived destruction despite modern progress. Between the television reporter (who relied on startling events to shock the viewer into believing in the absolute significance of the present) and the photographer (who was engaged in eternalizing the distant past) sat our narrator and told us the true story of someone whose past had suddenly caught up with him in an unexpected way.