For my first artefact I’m trying to produce a piece on the power of the photograph; the original way I thought about this was the power of the photograph in respect to memory. We tend mostly to remember events and things we have done through images; after a period of time the photograph is what we remember rather than the memory. Therefore the photograph is our main memento of the experience.
This then led me to think about the way in which images are used within the mass media. Images are used to enforce the reality of an event or story in our minds as the reader or viewer of this story. In this context the images promise experiences we do not know in many news stories. This is similar to how an image we have taken ourselves can become (as described above). The photo becomes a memento or reference point for an experience or memory we have forgotten or never actually experienced. This then exposes the power of images to create a discourse which allows the person producing the image to give knowledge to the viewer shaping how they feel about the subject of this image. Although the context of the image is totally controlled by the producer leading the viewer into a false sense of knowledge.
The way in which I want to represent this is idea is by creating a number of staged images of memories that never happened but to the viewer they look as if they are genuine representations of the experience.
