Family Photograph Appreciation - Richard Chlafen
In the article, Family Photograph Appreciation, Richard Chalfen discusses a teenage viewof the relation between family snapshots and home videos. He first explains the value ofpersonal photos using an example of natural or humanly coerced disasters and the mourning ofvisual traces of the past, or in other words, photographs. Family photographs are a veryimportant aspect of peoples lives and without them we may never remember our past. Bylooking at snapshots, slides, home movies, etc, we stimulate our memory of important dates andevents. He asks many questions about memory and video verses photography which will bediscussed with teens he has interviewed. Chalfen has structured an exploratory project that asked a small sample of thirtyteenagers, living in the Cambridge/Boston areas of Massachusetts to evaluate the relative meritsof using still photography and/or videography as a preferred medium of family photography.(Richard Chalfen) He conducted the interviews with two teens at a time while having a meal in asmall restaurant. He was interested in their opinions on co
You don't have to think when youwatch videos but by looking at photographs you search your memory for the details. AsChalfen has discussed, photographs are a way of triggering your mind to look back into the pastand relive a memory. They seem to be willing to put some work into collecting thisimportant information. Some people might find it disturbing for a grown man to find joy intaking pictures of his dying mother and father but he thought that by doing this he may somedayunderstand why any of these terrible things happened to them. Photos are low context which is that users must supply theinformation necessary to make sense of the image. Chalfen has concluded that photography may play a very active role in future studies ofmemory and family photograph collections are an important aspect of this. Perhaps we can conclude from this that there is a higher liking of still photographsover videography by most teens. You get sound and movement to enhance the overall effect which brings you to seethe whole experience. Pedro Meyer took several pictures throughout his entire life of his familygoing through happy or even rough experiences. High vs low context is also a difference between thetwo. When looking into human memory we realizethat most personal memories are still images and are not usually moving. Perhaps this was his way of coping with whatwas to come in the end. mparing photography andvideography, which came out to be very interesting. Videotapes seem to supply the viewer with more information and makes it easy toremember.
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