For the record

Abstract

Phonography and photography have been extensively discussed and analysed, but their complementary features as media of communication have received relatively little attention. Chief among these is the way in which, as technologies of recording, preservation and retrieval, they have affected forms of social remembering and orientations to historical time. Over the last century and more, phonograph music and photographic images have acquired strong and resonant associations with both personal and public memory, but how they actually help us engage with the past remains difficult to assess. When we look behind their familiar, everyday presence we realise that in their relations with time, memory and the process of remembering, they are both highly accurate and highly elusive. That is the paradox defining their mutual connections with the past.