PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY

In the old world photographers were scientists, members of a guild of experts in the know. The magic and mystery of operating a camera mistakenly endowed it with the sublime attribute of achieving absolute objectivity, of perpetuating truth.

Throughout the 20^th century press photographers were regarded as agents of this selfsame "truth", mediating its transmission from the scene of the event or the field of battle to the newspaper in the home. And that is how the flash that froze a moment in time became a representational iconic image of history shaping memory.

Photographers concurrently populated the developing medium in the field of art with new innovative images. They never pursued nor even felt indebted to "truth". Indeed in the field of art, from the time of Dadaism and Surrealism at the dawn of the 20^th century to the development of the "new medium" at the century's end, photography seemingly tended to treat reality by means of invention. Art photographers are mostly concerned with the medium per se – stretching the limits of technique and reappraising traditional stances with regard to fact and fiction, representation and remembrance.