Third Mythology is a work in progress I develop around the idea of photography as a trigger for memory. I explore whether the mere existence of visual evidence enables the transmission of concrete knowledge about the recorded event through time. I also investigate what we can actually learn from the photograph itself about a broader context of the recorded moment, and how that knowledge depends on the ritual of coming together around photographs.
I took three color photographs from my family’s album, taken during my early childhood, of which I have no recollection of my own. In them, I recognise myself and some close members of the family, yet the events and places remain unknown. The possibilities of interpretation of what is depicted depend on oral tradition, that is memory and experience of the person present at the time of photographing – my mother. Based on these three photographs, I struck a conversation with the mother and made an audio recording of her memories and impressions of the events depicted in the photos. I burned each of the photos and stored the remnants in glass containers.
Recording everyday life using the medium of photography in itself implies the establishment of some future mythology. In that sense, my mother’s memories, triggered by a ritual leafing through the photographs, can also be considered a kind of mythologem, a mental construct that serves to maintain a myth. Their oral transmission to me, who have no authentic memories of the original events, I consider a third level of mythology. It creates an infinite number of new mental images inside a listener’s mind.
