“Connecting past and present, my composites include old family photos combined with images reflecting how I perceive my heritage today.”-Astrid Reischwitz

“I look for unity between the human body and the nature. The older I grow, the more intense this desire is. By combining images of the human body and elements of nature I am trying to show that we are inter-connected and that our separate existence is impossible.”- Alicja Brodwicz

Essay Question: How can photography change the way we remember and connect people and events?

Exploration of connection holds a deep relation within my ideas of nostalgia, family, documenting and my day-to-day life. In this investigation I explore similar themes and motives portrayed through the work of a range artists. From personal archival images, Astrid Reischwitz work consists of keepsakes from family life that she transforms a visual world in her work of memory, identity, place, and home. Alicja Brodwicz searches for connection within the human body and our unique relationship to nature similarly to Agnieszka Lepka’s work project that explores the similarities of it. I’m hoping to portray in my personal study the familiar elements from each of these artists and my individual reflections of relations and attachment.

---

Documentary Photography describes photography that attempts to capture real-life situations and settings through the art of archival imagery. Photography’s capacity to capture reality led to an interest in documenting all the aspects of contemporary life. They play an essential role between the past and the present, they can connect us too our own personal histories. It emerged with the increase of the government taking social responsibility and of industrialised war. It’s mission was too serve the increasing need on the part of the democratic governments to justify their social and political policies to the ordinary citizen in the community, which was documentary photography’s main target. By the time of the Civil War, the daguerreotype and its descendants had established a popular following. Documentary photography had expanded in this period of time and was often allocated by art critics to the realm of journalism, an association that carries into the present. This assignment implied that documentary photographers were mere recorders, skilled technicians to be sure, but passive observers of the social scene and definitely not artists. Documentary photographers accepted this description in order to burnish the perceived interest in what’s lifelike and real
of their imagery. They presented as fact gatherers and denied having beauty-related or political calendar’s. In this new age, though documentary photography is not dead, as a practice, it is in transition and it faces serious challenges such as facing restrictions of war and more important issues that make a difference in our community. Documentarians were not simple propagandists for the western part of the world but were rather artists that had discerned central patterns of thought and feeling that were emerging in democratic societies. Finding people that took these new value into consideration, the documentary photographer was required to make narratives that would reject fascism, tyranny or totalitarianism. Although defined by content, the history of documentary photography, as with all photography, is the history of its technologies. photographs can be documented from the 1890s from family portraits to wedding portraits to individual ones. Documentarian photography can be identified through the outlook and layout of it whether in a diamond shape or a different irregular one, can be recognised through the colour difference in it when comparing. New technology has always challenged old perspectives by expanding the possibilities of what can be photographed. The emergence of social media platforms and digital camera technology, including smartphones, has been transformative in reinventing and rekindling the practice. My chosen themes of connection, family, identity, nature, and nostalgia can be linked to: Ansel Adams’s famous influence of work documenting natural landscapes through the 1930s stimulating a sort of spiritual connection to nature, as well as the earlier use and discovery of the zone system popularly used throughout the scale of photography, the relation of the connection of nature can be seen in Alicja Brodowicz more recent work when connecting nature vs human-like features. In terms of including archival imagery and photos relating to nostalgia, photographers like Diane Arbus and Christian Boltanski explore dynamics through family in the 1960s as well as using family photographs to explore further themes of memory and remembering human life. Similarly now, photographer Astrid Reistchwitz and Zoltán Kerényi using the power of archival imagery to connect individuals with a more broader social context.

---

In relation to “How can photography change the way we remember and connect people and events?” I feel as though Astrid Reischwitz portrays her work in this way. Through her image of “Blue” from the Spin Club Stories she places a photograph of a baby in comparison to a modern day taken photograph of a vibrant knitted jumper bordering the archival image and on the left of the archive a photograph of a woven through embroidered traditional pattern on linen this is because it may represent a certain tradition and/or cultural memory Astrid’s felt inspired by when she embroidered photographs. I can see that. She had clear intention for her work to look a certain way taking inspiration from the tradition of spin clubs in Northern Germany. From her past, Astrid grew up in a small farming village, a village that is bound to its history and that stands out through its traditions even today. Astrid’s upbringing probably had a significant impact on how she views and approaches the themes of memory as well as history in her work. The act of embroidering something can be often associated with tradition and domesticity. By immersing photography in this medium, she reinforces this idea that memory is personal in comparison to it being shared and collective. It is something that exists in physical form as well as visual, emotional connection to materialistic cultural. Her intention seems to be that photography can preserve traditions through its art, it can connect generational gaps and it can maintain these connections between the future, present and the past especially. The blend between photography and embroidery speaks as more of a passive recording tool, it becomes a mean of communicating through identity, memory and connections over time similarly linking to the previous themes mentioned. Astrid’s “Stories from the Kitchen Table” can also reminisce the times where of the hardship of farm ship and event during the second world war which still shadows over certain family members Astrid explains, hardship can can still be felt today and through that hardship she tries to represented that as and tell the tales which can give her a chance to reflect and transform her ideas. Researching her work closely, I believe that Astrid’s work can closely be linked to the question “How can photography change the way we remember and connect people and events“. This because it clearly encapsulates her motives for the project of Spin Club Tapestries” and creating her “Stories from the Kitchen Table” presents the topic of photography as an everchanging art form.

---

In relation to “How can photography change the way we remember and connect people and events?” I feel as though Alicja Brodwicz portrays this in her work. Alicja’s work focuses on references linking to how we view nature and how we connect the natural environment to a living being. Alicja’s clear connections highlight that life is in some shape or another clonnected whether by apparence or by human nature. Through the photographers work she presents an obvious comparsion between skin, veins,bones and other features that are natural to us. As well as exploring these topics Alicja’s work can express an association to memory and her work can become a tool for sensing moments for nostalgia and the present e.g. ageing of skin etc. The different ways light, shadows, trees and seasons could highlight Alicja’s influence and it could possible reflect human emotions such as being growth, decay or even rebirth. Through the aesthetic of Alicja’s work and making her work appear interesting and appealing to the viewers eye, she includes abstract elements where the human form is somewhat fragmented as well as it being intertwined with natural like elements like water, light or a relation to a forest-like setting. Some viewers may feel unsettled by this as it may present human being thought to being closer related to other subjects wheras an opposing audience may feel that capturing this moment of stillness and the close relationship between the two elements as symbolic and as conveying a deeper meaning of existence and meaning of life. The different ways light, shadows, trees and seasons could highlight Alicja’s influence and it could possible reflect human emotions such as being growth, decay or even rebirth. Her focus on family and individuals can relate to how we change the way we remember and connect people and events, this presented in her images through her emphasis of the importance of having these shared experiences and how they shape our sense of self and our close relations with others. In some of her other similar work she present interection between others whether they are distant or intimate. This demonstates that photography can help in a way preserve the relations and present the emotional complexities that may be inlvolved. It may also prompt the audience to reconsider how they percieve people and percieve the natural world, percieving it as an active part of our world and as a partipant in how our memories, identity and experiences change.

---

Similarly to the other artists my work seems to deepen the viewers understanding of identity, human experience and relationships. Whether the work is focused on memory, natures and subcultures there is common elements of photograhy that can uncover deeper levels of personal and or collective narratives. In Astrid Reistchwitz’s works she documents a specifc subculture wheras Alicja Brodwicz’s work entails a sense of fluidity in human and nature connections. In my work I try and present more intimate and more isolated moments when looking at perosnal histories with present day identities e.g. looking at my familes archival documents and comparing to modern day changes and fluxtations. I want my approach to experiemtent more with abstract elements or conceptual images as using these visual representations may make the viewert feel and be more willing to give emotional and influenced responses. While there are overlaps in in the way my chosen photographers and I approached the themes of memory, identity, relations, nostalgia, connection and inldung the medium and specifc topic that may vary constrastly, it allows for a diverse interpretation of the relationship between people, history and the world around.

Literary Sources

Haas-K, Astrid-Reischwitz: Spin Club Stories [online] https://www.reischwitzphotography.com/book [accessed 9th Jan 2025]

Unknown Author, Alicja-Brodowicz-Visual Exercises: A Series Of Diptychs [online] https://independent-photo.com/stories/visual-exercises-a-series-of-diptychs/ [accessed 9th Jan 2025]

Curtis-J, Making Sense Of Documentary Photography [online] https://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/photos/photos.pdf [accessed 23rd Jan 2025]

Bogre M-, Documentary Photography Reconsidered [online] https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003103516/documentary-photography-reconsidered-michelle-bogre [accessed 26th Jan 2025]

Some inspiration from websites I’ve read:

Wells L. (1998). ‘The Subject as Object: Photography and the Human Body’ in Photography: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge.

Kotz, L. (1998) ‘”Aesthetics” of Intimacy’ in Bright, D. (1998) The Passionate Camera: Photography and bodies of desire. London: Routledge

Kelly, A. (1998). ‘Self Image: Personal is Political’ in Photography: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge.