Doug Lang's blog

Memory pictures

I’ve always loved the many aspects of photography but I am especially interested in its relation to memory.

A photograph remains as is.
Or, does it?

We do know now that memories degrade, that when we remember something repeatedly, the most recent memory is actually a memory of the second most recent memory, not a memory of the actual source event. It’s like a Xerox of a Xerox. 

Self-portrait in a bathroom mirror

I remember a day I spent at Swansea beach with Cynthia Hudson in January 1964.  There were these large, sculptural rows of bleached driftwood and I took many photographs of Cynthia on the beach with and without the driftwood, with her camera. My memory of that day is the memory of those black and white photographs.  I was 22 years old. On that day the year 1984 was not only the name of Orwell’s vision but a year in the unimaginable future, just to give you an idea of how long ago it was. I left the Cynthia photographs in a trunk in London when I first came to DC in April 1973. They are long gone. In February 1999 there was a fire at my apartment at The Albemarle on Connecticut Avenue in which I lost most of the photographs I owned. They were close to where the fire started near my desk in my study-bedroom and they were destroyed or lost along with much of 30 years worth of work, in hard copies and on two computers, and a lot else besides. Fortunately, there was a bunch of framed photographs in the kitchen and in the living room, which survived. Some of my favorite photographs had been on the wall around my desk, including my all-time favorite photograph of myself -- they were all lost.

A violinist named Martha Edwards took that on the island of Paros in 1971 -- it showed me sitting with a ten-year-old girl named Jennifer Packer, the daughter of my friend Toni Packer. There was a whole world of memory in that photograph and now it is gone forever. I still have the memory of the photograph and it’s much stronger than my memory of the day it was taken. I was crazy about Toni and there was something special in the bond between Jennifer and me. Everyone knew it and everyone commented on how satisfied we both looked sitting on a whitewashed stone bench under the Aegean sun in that photograph..  “Everyone” being the community of (mainly American) artists and writers connected to the Aegean School of Fine Arts. When I looked at that photograph on the wall behind my desk at the Albemarle, I could imagine the massive night sky over Paros so crowded with stars, so close it seemed, it seemed you could touch them. There was a tremendous sense of peace under that sky. And I could remember my connection with Toni and Jennifer as my life among those galaxies and constellations, in that peace, not as a fantasy of domestic (or sexual) life, but as something that transcended all of that,

I believe that a photograph is an “object” made of light. But a photograph has the potential to “document” much more than the physical world; photographs have that potential for mystery and for magic.  

There’s a scene in a wonderful film called Queen Christina in which Greta Garbo is in a bedroom at an inn with her lover John Gilbert. She rushes around the room, touching everything, in attempt to memorize the room and its emotional, sexual, and spiritual contents via sensory perception, I feel like a modest version of Greta when I go about with my camera.

Taking pictures

I've always loved taking pictures, I've always loved photography. I love light. I love the tangible world. I love the relationship of photography to memory. I bought my Cannon Power Shot SD750 because I had always wanted to own a camera. Also, I thought that it would be a pleasure and fun to share taking photographs with Sandra, a wonderful photographer who had not yet crossed the digital threshold. I wanted to cross it with her. I am totally sympathetic to old school photography and the dilemmas caused by the phenomenon of digital photography, but I also appreciate the immediacy of digital photography, especially in relation to the internet.

And it has been so fun. I found myself using Facebook photo albums as a kind of journal. For someone with an intense and elaborate internal life, it’s a joy to focus so much on the external world. I find myself uninhibited by the fear of taking bad pictures, or being cheesy or arty or whatever. My approach is completely naive, although I think that I do have a pretty good eye. Speaking of skills, here's an anecdote.

While I served as interim dean at the Corcoran (1987-1988), I relieved the concentration of administrative work by taking a photography course with my friend and colleague Paul Kennedy, a superb teacher. Another friend and colleague, Bob Epstein was kind enough to loan me one of his cameras for the duration. It didn't go smoothly, not entirely. Paul told me that I had not only made just about every mistake imaginable (such as opening a box of paper in a lighted room), but I’d come up with a few no one else had ever even though of. What’s more, the course was titled Beginning Photography, but I was the only beginner in the class. Everyone else was there (mostly) for darkroom access and (also) to get guidance from Paul. So, whenever I asked dumbass beginner questions, the rest of the class got really pissed. I was wasting their time. My critiques were savage. I made some fairly appealing prints, I thought. They did not agree. One guy virtually foamed at the mouth because of the way I’d used a telephoto lens. He told me I was cheating. I was saved by administrative predicaments requiring my attention and and I quit the course with a couple weeks left.  

So, after having a wonderful time with my Power Shot, I began to think about how I could improve my photographic acumen, Take a course? I didn’t think so. Corrective eye surgery? Nah, And so on. And then I got it: I should buy a better camera, which was how I came to own my Leica C-Lux 3.

And so my journal continues, and I’ve discovered that the process has seriously affected the way I see. I now see pictures, just the same way language I hear (or read) leads to poems, and the way stories I used to catch or imagine lead to fiction. I’m grateful to the digital era for making everything so much easier (the dark room was the worst aspect of my brilliant photography career in the late 1980s). And I’m very happy with my journal. You just don't know.