ABSTRACT
Photographs also both create and obliterate memory. For every memory created and preserved photographically, another is lost. Neurobiologists talk about memory as a dynamic mental construction generated from an underlying knowledge base. Humans have several types of memory: public, collective, collaborative, and autobiographical, which is the visual memory of everyday life events. Contemporary documentary photography is unique in its mnemonic capacity because it can be widely and easily distributed. If the collective memory of a culture determines what memorials it erects, then maybe the public memory is partly determined by what photographs become iconic. Photographic archives are rich with documentary photographs as memory because they contain private photos not created to be seen publicly. Archives range from museum collections and historical collections to government files and even family albums. Documentary photographs can also live in memory space of self-portraiture, as selfies, although selfies or self-portraits disrupt power dynamic of portraiture because the photographer is both the subject and the photographer.
