Immigrants, Memory and Photography

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Immigrants, Memory and Photography

• The Immaculate Conception Photography Gallery
• by Katherine Govier

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Outline

• General Issues
• City on three levels
• Immigrants, memory and photography
• Immaculate Conception Starting Questions
• Sandro as an immigrant
• Different Views on photography
• Sandros changes
• The author and her words

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Issues related to a CityCanadian ? Individual ?
General

• concept city vs. lived city (Lion)
• rational planning vs. disordered, multiple
  spaces (utopia vs. heterotopia) (Mislaid)
• invisible cities (in culture, of history) and
  imagined communities (Daybreak newspapers)

• racial and gender relationships immigrant
  ghettos
• identity initiation, parents, religion, death,
  trauma, mask, passion, value.
• history portrait in Canvas of Time, and the
  wall and confession in Le Confessionnal.

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Immigrants, Memory and Photography

• Immigrants permanent sojourners, ???? and ?????
  a potted plant? with an empty luggage? We
  have floated upwards from history, from memory,
  from Time. (Rushdie, Shame 70-71)
• Memory ????????????????Permanent, unique and
  genuine? A process of reconstruction? Like
  watching movies? The past is a country from
  which we have all migrated (Imaginary
  Homelands)

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Immigrants, Memory and Photography (2)

• Like cars and newspaper, it is a sign of
  modernity (Cf. Goviers words) like T.V. and
  movies, it is part of contemporary visual
  culture.
• Evidence of identity memory/history
• photorealism ?? mechanical reproduction

http//www.artcyclopedia.com/history/photorealism.
html
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Photorealism?

• by Close,
• Chuck

?????????????
Pictures dont tell you everything.
http//sunsite.dk/cgfa/c/c-9.htmclose
Lucas, 1986-87, oil pencil on canvas
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Starting Questions

• Why do the customers want to have their photos
  changed?
• Why does Sandro disagree with it, but then keep
  on doing it? What types of moral judgment does
  he make along the way? How do his wife and his
  drunkard-friend Becker respond to them? What
  does Sandro do at the end? Would you keep on
  doing it if you were Sando?
• What have these changes to do with immigrant
  identities in a city?
• How else do we fix our memories? Or survive
  bad memories?

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Sandro and the immigrant community

• modern, adventure, no religion p. 126
• vs. village, religion, and close-knit community.
  P. 127 135
• gender bias

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Different views of photography memory

• The customers
• Photo is forever Alicias Punishment p. 129
• want good memory, worth the price 130
• Mostly family photos adding in a brother 131

• Sandros
• Like a plastic surgeon 128
• Existential questions about life vs. things, 131
• Creator/murderer p. 132

• His wife/friend
• Lie
• Things and survival
• Factual and practical responses.

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Reasons for Sandros Continuing the job of
changing photos

• machines 131
• curiosity p. 131
• prayer 132 curiosity, challenge, compassion,
  greed.

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Different views of photography memory (2)

• The customers
• Dioradenies the past

• Sandros
• Feel god-like
• Keep a file 133
• Cannot wipe people out

• Becker
• Art and money
• No standard.

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The changes in Sandro

• skills improved getting more machines
• "Are we here just to have our photograph taken?
  
• See himself as God, making and changing human
  bodies and communities p. 133
• See himself murderer, keeping the bodies. P.
  135
• love indifference, ill at homedangerous and
  unreliable?
• erasing himself and going west. (the authors
  words)

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Immaculate Conception

• machine-made memory and identity
• causing concern, compassion or indifference?
• How else can we do?
• Picture-taking as a ritual.

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Katherine Govier

• born in Edmonton, Alberta.
• has lived in Calgary Washington D.C. and
  London, England now in Toronto
• studied English literature at the University of
  Alberta and York University
• Writer of 6 novels and 3 short story collections
• currently vice-president of PEN Canada.

• The Immaculate Conception Photography Gallery.
  Toronto Little Brown Canada, 1994.

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The West

• We discuss the West, where she says people are
  more clear-eyed, pragmatic and energetic, and
  don't waste their time on pretence. Every now and
  then, her husband says, "Oh, you're doing your
  Alberta thing again," she says wryly. "But the
  West is indelible in me - the light and the land
  and the magnificent people that I grew up with."
• http//www.canoe.ca/JamBooksFeatures/govier.html

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Photography

• "Immaculate Conception Photography Gallery," the
  story was the first major piece that I wrote that
  anyone ever saw that had to do with
  photography.And then of course the novel, Angels
  Walk, about a photographer.
• I love photography. I think it's the art form
  of the
  20th century. It's just endlessly fascinating to
  me. I like the fact that it's about light. I like
  the fact that it has to do with stealth and
  pursuing and capturing. In other words, I like
  the process. I like how it's made.
  http//www.januarymagazine.com/profiles/govier.htm
  l