Photography as a metaphor for memory. Comparative study of open shutter photography and average photography in contemporary art

This article analyzes several contemporary art practices based on photography that can be interpreted as a metaphorical representation of images of memory and remembrance. We have divided these practices into two fields; firstly we will contextualize them by the analysis of their historical precendents and background; next, we will focus on the case studies of several contemporary artists. Thus, the first field includes artworks based on a continuous and extended record of time captured through photography so that we interpret them as related to a persistent experience of the past, as we observe in Michael Wesely' s, Hiroshi Sugimoto 's or Jim Campbell' s artwork. The second field encompasses a different photography model based on overlap and average which no longer reproduces an uninterrupted experience but rather a type of generic picture related to an archetypal image of media culture, as the artworks of artists like Corinne Vionnet or Jason Salavon reveal. Therefore, as we will set out, both strategies represent differently the experience of memory as a record of a temporality.