This text is part of the special section Relève en recherche
Since receiving her first camera at the age of seven, researcher Felicity TC Hamer has always had this fascination with photography and the role it plays in people’s lives. As part of her doctorate at Concordia, she wonders about the link between photos, the way we create our memories and mourning.
“My goal is to understand my own relationship with photography. My hope is that by collecting stories and observing how people talk about images that are important to them, I understand a little better what photography brings us. It is a powerful memory tool. The photos of the people we have lost are a kind of portal, a way to always stay in touch with those loved ones who are no longer physically available, ”summarizes the researcher.
She is also interested in how people who have lost a loved one alter photographs where the deceased loved one is found, whether by adding text to them, taking a picture of themselves with the photo or even adding digital composition.
So that’s what worried her at the start of her doctorate. But it wasn’t until a year later, during her research, when she herself suddenly lost a close friend, that her subject focused on a very specific concept that she developed: la ” hauntography “.
“When I woke up to hear of the death of a dear friend, I immediately thought of a photo of her and me taken at a party when we were teenagers. She always laughed at that shot and often said how funny it was. So, the morning I found out that she had passed away, I looked all over my house and couldn’t find her. I felt like that meant I couldn’t access my friend anymore, ”says Felicity TC Hamer.
A second mourning
It was through this experience that the researcher understood that even when a photo is missing, it still exists in people’s memory and that even if the physical object in that photo is no longer there, it plays a role in the way we remember someone.
This is what she calls ” hauntographs “, Mixture of the verb” to haunt “in English and” photography “. She observes the role that the latter have in the formation of memories.
“The reason I use the word ‘haunt’ is not in a negative context, but more to describe how we continue to feel the presence of the people we have lost,” she says. .
“People grieve the loss of these photographs almost as much as they mourn the loss of the people in the photos,” she notes.
To further understand the role of physical photographs in the grieving process, Mr.me Hamer analyzes stories similar to his. She tries to find out why some photos become more important than others.
These experiences and stories are revealing, according to her, of what humans bring to photography to make it a tool of memory and to build memories.
“This idea doesn’t get out of my head, I believe that the way we influence photography through our memories and the way our memories influence photography are interconnected,” she adds. Photos are more than they are because we give them that role. Without the person who knows the story behind, a photo is just a photo, nothing more. “
A piece of the missing person
The researcher believes that this is even more true when a photo has disappeared: the latter then continues to exist through the memories of the person who remembers the snapshot.
“It is revealing of what photographs manage to produce as a tool of memory. There’s something special about them that makes them almost tactile, like a piece of the missing person, kind of like having a lock of hair or a piece of paper she wrote on, ”she believes.
If his concept of ” hauntograph Was born out of a desire to understand why losing this particular shot of her and her friend was like losing her friend again, her job also became a way for her to get through her own grief.
“I came to understand that it was not the end of the world to have lost this photo, since it is always with me in my memories, and that the memories which are linked to it also remain with me, even if I no longer have access to it, ”concludes the researcher.