ABSTRACT
Walter Benjamin makes a striking observation about the capacity of certain
dramatic events to act like a flash bulb and imprint particular architectural
environments on the ‘photosensitive’ plate of our minds. It is as though
buildings sink into the recesses of our consciousness as a form of background
landscape – almost unnoticeable because of their very familiarity – unless
some event happens there that leaves them indelibly imprinted on our minds,
such as a tragic accident or a death in the family:
Anyone can observe that the duration for which we are exposed
to impressions has no bearing on their fate in memory. Nothing
prevents us keeping rooms in which we have spent twenty-four
hours or less clearly in our memory, and forgetting others in which
we have passed months. It is not, therefore, due to insufficient
exposure if no image appears on the plate of remembrance. More
frequent, perhaps, are the cases when the half-light of habit denies
the plate the necessary light for years, until one day from an alien
source it flashes as if from burning magnesium powder, and now
a snapshot transfixes the room’s image on the plate. Nor is this very
mysterious, since such moments of sudden illumination are at the
same time moments when we are beside ourselves, and, while our
waking, habitual, everyday self is involved actively or passively in
what is happening, our deeper self rests in another place and is
touched by the shock, as is the little heap of magnesium powder by
the flame of the match.1
