Picturing_Society

Picturing Society In the article, Family Photograph Appreciation, Richard Chalfen discusses a teenage view of the relation between family snapshots and home videos. He first explains the value of personal photos using an example of natural or humanly coerced disasters and the mourning of visual traces of the past, or in other words, photographs. Family photographs are a very important aspect of peoples lives and without them we may never remember our past. By looking at snapshots, slides, home movies, etc, we stimulate our memory of important dates and events. He asks many questions about memory and video verses photography which will be discussed with teens he has interviewed. Chalfen has structured an exploratory project that asked a small sample of thirty teenagers, living in the Cambridge/Boston areas of Massachusetts to evaluate the relative merits of using still photography and/or videography as a preferred medium of family photography. (Richard Chalfen) He conducted the interviews with two teens at a time while having a meal in a small restaurant. He was interested in their opinions on comparing photography and videography, which came out to be very interesting. The teens explained to him about the effects of video tapes and how they were a way of “being there” all over again. Some of photographs, memory, teens, way, photography, over, looking, important, family, video, very, two, pedro, videos, videography, using, remember, play, photos, past, one, meyer, interviews, information, context, chalfen, aspect, williams, whole, watching, visual, understand, through, supply, small, seem