Epilogue: Archive Matters

Abstract

“the archive […] will never be either memory or anamnesis as spontaneous,alive and internal experience. On the contrary: the archive takesplace at the place of originary and structural breakdown of said memory.”1What the philosopher Jacques Derrida diagnoses about the archive, takingplace at the lieu of a structural breakdown of memory, is pertinent as well forthe complicit yet complicated relationship between history and photography. Itis this collapse that all articles of this Special Issue allude to when they examinephotography as history. Let me take this idea a little further and consider howarchives matter when it comes to discussing the images’ “tension between factsand meanings” mediated on the level of memory and remembrance.2 I will arguethat the relationship between history and photography is defined by the archive asa place of consignation negotiated by the images that may nevertheless becomepowerful enough to articulate counter-semantics and alternative narratives ofcivil imaginations. As a sort of epilogue I wish to reveal this implicit politicalontological dimension of photography that is irreducibly tied to the archive.