Introduction

Abstract

In this book, we deal with two very different communications technologies. Our interest in them derives from this difference, but is also directed towards something they have in common — which is their relationship to memory. The relationship varies because of the contrast between them, and that is what we want to explore. Photography and recorded music have been chosen for concerted attention because our empirical research has shown that they are the two most significant technologies of remembering in everyday life, and have been for a considerable period of time. This research has involved us in several interrelated projects.1 Across this work photography and music were the two media most referred to as mnemonic resources or devices. As a result, the overall purpose of this book is to examine how they operate as ways of facilitating processes of recall and recollection, looking at them both in their own right and in their interrelationship. We look at them in these ways because, although they are for the most part used independently of each other, they are often compared in what people say of them. They are regarded as complementary means for regaining the past and for relating the past to the present, however partially and selectively this may be done.