Are some things unknowable? Maybe. Here is a photograph of my Dad I found at my Grandma’s house tucked away, his name is Matt; and this photograph was taken in 1995 when he graduated college in Worthing, West Sussex. At this time, he was half-way through the 90s, about 23 years old. Will I know all about his life during this time? I can ask him, and he can give me infinite detail: for example, he’s told me the story of living in Islington in London during this time, when his neighbour’s flat was firebombed. As well, I can ask about his friends and who they were, what their jobs were and how they were to him. Like Tom Tang, who owned a Chinese Takeaway. Take his other friend Matt, they both robbed a laundrette when they were 18 and my dad has told me how he died suspiciously in Hong Kong in 97′. Given the stories he’s told me, I can get a good understanding of how his life was back then, but can I truly know all of it?

I can say for certain that I will never know everything he lived through during the 90s, not every day to detail. How he felt, what he saw- what he doesn’t want me to know. I won’t ever know. Say he’s forgotten about some events; he can’t talk about them and therefore it is unknowable. Even this photograph, can I ever know who took it? My Dad doesn’t remember, nobody in the photograph does. Sure, I could check archived CCTV footage, interview masses of people who may have witnessed it- but at least in one case alone, nobody will have documented or remembered it. I can hear about and know a lot about the life he led during that decade, but I won’t hear about the other half of that time. The stories I do hear however, could be false. The majority of sources are memories of other people, which are often false or exacerbated. I can’t take this as truth then. So, given the fact that some details no longer exist, and that many of the other details can be fallible due to the nature of these sources: therefore, yes, some things are unknowable.