Reviews for Locating Memory: Photographic Acts, Vol. 4

The average rating for Locating Memory: Photographic Acts, Vol. 4 based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-03-05 00:00:00 Calvin Cruz "Locating Memory" is an edited collection of essays about the relationship between photography and cultural memory. The different essays emphasize that like cultural memory our reading of photographs is never static, but constantly transforming, influenced by many different factors, including history and society. The book therefore does not only concentrate on explaining the production of an image and the environment where it is currently stored, but also the afterlife of these images and their potential 'reframings'. The essays focus on different case studies including family photos from Japanese internment camps in WWII-Canada and key images of the Vietnam war. Many of the essays concentrate on how to work with orphaned photographs, i.e. images where little is known about their provenience, production and context. Sometimes the readings and the contextualization of these photographs is enlightening, sometimes this is not the case, and the quality of the individual essays therefore differs a lot.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-07-18 00:00:00 Ninos Isho Nice overview of each of our first ladies. Sets a neutral to positive tone on each one. For example, the less educated ones are lauded for being fine hostesses. For being charming or lovely or friendly and other pretty basic compliments. Many of the "first ladies" were actually relatives other than the president's wife for various reasons. One president for example was a widower, another a bachelor, still another had a wife in ill health. When the hostess was other than the wife, the book is rather curt on information which is too bad. We'd like to know about ALL of the first ladies. I bought this book while in Kentucky at Mary Todd Lincoln's home. The docent told us the Todd family owned slaves. What Mary thought of this, (she was dating Abraham Lincoln!) the docent told us "is not known." That's a shame. I would be very curious to know. I would be curious to know about all the first ladies who served prior to the Civil War how they felt about slaves or if they owned slaves. I think such information would help me understand them more fully. I think it is something that must be known to history and is just left out of this book to be politic. I had to knock off a star for that. I was very sad to note how many of these women lost children to early deaths. Many of them had quite tragic lives. Overall an interesting book about women in a pretty exclusive club.