ABSTRACT
Chapter Two considers the core concept of memory – one of the central motifs of both heritage and photography. Rather than outline a strict theory of memory, the chapter treats the concept as a meeting space in which the overlaps, contradictions, and divergences of heritage and photography might be picked apart and worked through. To this end the chapter is broad in scope, examining both the overarching patterns of remembrance and forgetting that heritage and photography may be caught up in, as well as the specific historical formations that help structure the workings of memory in different contexts (e.g. the exhibition, the archive, the family album). Throughout this analysis memory is seen as highly ambivalent: visceral yet fragile; fluid yet deeply grounded in places, images, and experiences. To help navigate this uncertainty a model of affective memories is put forward in which remembrance and forgetting are always emergent and inherently distributed across varied affective agents. This provides a foundation for subsequent case study research in which memory is ever-present, though always understood in different ways and to different ends.
