Matt Hale

 


table memory

A photograph and a memory can join together to the point where they become one and the same. It is impossible sometimes to know whether a memory is the memory of a photograph or is an actual memory untouched by a recorded image taken at the time. It is problematic to realise that I may only remember the past with the aid of a photograph as a stimulus, and that actual events may have been forgotten. table memory is a looped video made using photographs. One black & white image is of myself aged 8 drawing at a table. In the late 90’s I found the negative and reprinted it to exactly fit the width of the drawer in the table, and installed it ‘permanently’ there under glass. A few years after that I re-enacted the black and white image, but of course I was an adult and there were many differences. The resulting documentary photograph was in colour and exists in print form as a series on a contact sheet. table memory is constructed using digital images taken of these ‘originals’, which are treated as objects as much as they are images, with their stains, dust, reflections and size differences revealed. The table continues to endure but has changed over time, gaining scratches and repair marks. I used to stand at it to draw, but to do the same I now have to kneel. Sometimes I still feel childlike, even though I am in my early 60’s, and continue to draw now as then.


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