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http://hea.sagepub.com/content/7/2/129Theonline version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/1363459303007002872

2003 7: 129Health (London)Alan Radley and Diane Taylor

ForgettingRemembering One's Stay in Hospital: A Study in Photography, Recovery and

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Remembering ones stay in

hospital:a study inphotography,recovery andforgetting

Alan R adley & D iane TaylorL oughborough University, UK & D e M ontfort University, UK

A B S T R A C T This article addresses the question of how people remember

their time as a hospital in-patient, and what place this remembering has in

the wo rk of recovery. It is based upon a study in which patients too k photo-

graphs during their time on a hospital ward, using them later on as the basis

for a n interview in their homes. U sing one w omans dat a we discuss how t he

photo-based interviews made legible the images of her hospital experience

and the part these images played in the respondents account o f her recovery.

The use of photographs is particularly useful in showing how remembering

involves an ongoing transfer between different kinds of representation,

including the narrative exploration of the movement of objects between

hospital and home.

K E Y W O R D S hospi tal ; nar rati ve; pho tography ; recovery; remember ing;representation

A D D R E S S Alan R adley, D epartment of Social Sciences, Loughborough

U niversity, L oughb oro ugh, L eics., LE 11 3TU , U K. [Tel: + 44 (0)1509 223356;

fa x: + 44 (0)1509 223944; e-ma il: A.R .R ad ley@lboro .ac.uk]

IntroductionIn a recent a rticle, the medical sociologist D avid R ier (2000) described his

experience of being a patient in intensive care. This description was facili-

ta ted by his having retained a notebook tha t he used to communicate with

his family and w ith sta ff during his time in an Intensive Ca re U nit (ICU ).

Rier was able to make use of this notebook in his work because, he says,

a few weeks after discharge, I was prepared to relive my hospitalisation

by reading the notebook for the first time (2000: 85). As a result, he

provides a rare and insightful account of what it is like to be a patient in

intensive care and, equally important, highlights the lack of research thataddresses the situation of the critically ill (see also Backman and Walther,

2001). On the basis of his own unwilling but opportune participation, Rier

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I l l ness and M edici ne

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suggests that we might learn more about the acute or critical phases of

illness by asking patients to keep notebooks of their time in ICU. What

such notebooks might reveal, he says, are the layers of memory that such

writings can capture and those that they cannot. Specifically, he recom-

mends that interviews would ta ke place in two stages: while the patient wa s

still in hospital and then again a fter discharge, once the fo rmer patient andthe researcher have had time to review the notebooks.

The present article reports such a study of hospital experience, though

using photography as the chosen medium rather than notebooks. Patients

were asked to take photographs on the ward, a nd then to ta lk about these

during their hospita l sta y a nd then la ter on at home. In this way, it is possible

to a ddress the question of w hat it is that people remember about their time

in hospital. E qually, it becomes possible to ask about the role of fo rgetting

in the work of recovering ones health. In this case recovery refers to a

number of things; the overcoming of d isease, the working through of illnessexperience and the tra nsition ba ck from the status of sick person to tha t o f

hea lthy individual. While we endorse R iers criticism of the la ck of research

relating to the critical phase of illness, this report does not locate that

experience in hospita l alone. Instead, w e ask questions about wha t it means

to have been in hospital, to be recovering from illness or to be someone

for whom this is one o f several episodes in the course of their treatment.

Recovering after a stay in hospital is not an isolated period. This is

because it stands as a time that has been eagerly anticipated while patients

were on the ward, and even beforehand in the projection of the wholeepisode prior to admission. In the case of serious illness these weeks are

also a time during which the experiences of being an in-patient are worked

through, and accounts of medical treatment often reflect this when suffer-

ers discuss their recovery of health (Frank, 1991). It then itself becomes a

time remembered. While there are important differences between the

course of treatment for acute and chronic illness, the idea that the weeks

after discharge from hospital are a time of repair sits well with the notion

of a biogra phy disrupted (B ury, 1982). While the litera ture on chronic

illness has much to say ab out how people fa ce the diagnosis of d isease and

the trials of sickness after treatment, the voice of the patient during their

time in hospita l is largely accepted a s one silenced by medicine. In particu-

lar, a ccounts of chronic illness dea l in retellings, in the working over wha t

happened to patients in hospital, but have continuing relevance for the

sufferers concerned. It is this retrospective evidence that Rier (2000)

complains is insufficient if we are to know more about what happens to

people while they are in hospital. Hence we need accounts at both times,

so that we can appreciate how this inter-folding of temporal experience

occurs and what its significance for understanding recovery might be.

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attempted in the wa y it was fra med. This emphasizes the role of this medium

in the fabrication of the world as we would like it to be, or to have been

when seen from some time in the future. We often do not distil out the

picture content from the technology, because in its assimilation to cultural

life we do not realize photography as the extension of the senses that it is,

a prosthetic engagement with the world that it is helping to make (Lury,1998). This view of memory as reconstructive rather than replicative is

consistent with the rejection of a realist view of photography. It is also in

line with the a rgument tha t its use be premised upon an expressive deploy-

ment, to facilitate its potential to question, a rouse curiosity, tell in different

voices or see through different eyes from beyond (Edwards, 1997: 54). In

the context of the hospita l this call was anticipated in the work of J o Spence

(1995). She not only contested the power of medicine in her treatment for

breast cancer but challenged the conventionality and a rtifice of photographic

styles often used to portra y women (D ykstra , 1995; B ell, 2002).The act of photography and the inspection of photographs are together

bound up within the making and remaking of the past. Photographs are

resources for remembering so tha t, along w ith other material artefa cts and

people, they can be used later on as aids to remember by. For example,

when family members view photographs together they attend to these

pictures in a special way, encouraging interest and attitudes that are

revived through the elaboration of conversation (Edwards and Middle-

ton, 1988). From this perspective, remembering is not a phenomenon

circumscribed by cognitive activity but rather a product of a social, collec-tive act in which people draw upon cultural resources to say what the past

might have, or must ha ve been (Middleton a nd E dwards, 1990: G arro ,

2000). Not only is the (social) act of photography constitutive of remem-

bering, but so is the act of presenting people with photographs and asking

them to ta lk about them and why they were taken.

There is a necessity here to see photographs as being more than a t rigger

for eliciting memories. The act of talking about them is integral to the act

of remembering so that this meaning-making gives sense to the image. In

saying this, however, it is important not to suggest that photographs, as

material artefacts, are dead matter enlivened by talk. As we shall show,

people make sense withphotographs not just make sense of them sothat we are dealing here with a continuum of representation involving a

transfer between kinds of action and media of representation (Streek,

1996). In particular, the use of photography allows for an examination of

the ongoing transfer between kinds of representat ion, where language, the

body and material things are all involved together.

The study describedThe data for analysis are drawn from a study of nine patients who were in

hospital for at least one week, either for surgery or for medical

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investigations. This article deals with remembering the hospital stay, and

focuses upon the home (and to a lesser extent the hospita l) interviews given

by one woman who was admitted for surgery. We choose to discuss the

interview with just one person to allow cross-reference between comments

on the several photographs taken. This womans da ta are selected because

of the range of photographs she took and because of the richness of herhome interview, each of which exemplifies some key issues about recovery

and recall.

The forma t fo r the study was a s follows. Once patients had given consent

to be approached we explained to them that the research was about their

experience of the ward and that we wished them to photograph up to 12

things tha t they thought signifi cant about their stay. The respondents were

told tha t the pictures could be of a nything on the ward tha t wa s significant

to them, with one proviso. They could select spaces or things tha t were part

of the hospital, as well as objects that they had brought in with them.H owever, no photographs of people were a llowed (this wa s due to a restric-

tion on the part of the hospital). This did not preclude patients talking

about other people (staff or patients) when reviewing the photographs

during interview. This meant tha t other people were discussed in the study

through patients inserting them into the pictures, not through being

photographed directly. Written guidelines about the photography exercise

were left w ith the patients, as well as a sheet on which they could plan their

shots in advance. The researcher stayed with the patients while they

selected and took their photographs. We used a simple fixed-focus auto-flash 35mm camera, containing 24 frames allowing two shots of each space

or object selected. This wa s supplemented w ith a Pola roid camera to enable

production of prints that could be used in the hospital interview conducted

immediately afterwards. (Further details of the procedure and the hospital

interview are given in Radley and Taylor (2003).)

The hospital interview was open-ended and limited to the explication of

the photographs obta ined. The reason for no t conducting a wider-ranging

interview w as to ma intain focus upon the act of photography and its poten-

tial. In this research we acknowledge photography as both procedure and

event (an episode within the hospita l experience): it was not merely a bridge

to obtaining illness narratives. The interview was tape-recorded with the

patients permission, each interview lasting approximately one hour.

Patients were asked about the pictures in the order in which they were

listed (shots were not always taken in the selected order for practical

reasons). Each photograph was presented to the patient who was asked to

say what the picture showed, what in particular was being photographed

and to give their response to the places or objects pictured. Then all the

photographs were spread out and the patient asked to choose which one

was most important in capturing their experience of being in hospital andwhy. This selection procedure was continued until all the photographs had

been discussed. E ach pa tient was then a sked to comment upon their choice

Radley & Taylor : Remember ing Ones Stay in H ospi tal

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of shots, whether they had been able to photograph things they wanted to

select, to comment upon the limitations of the exercise for showing some-

thing of their time in hospita l and to say something about the a ct of photog-

raphy itself.

We used a slightly different forma t in the follow-up interview, conducted

four weeks later in the patients homes.2 After asking general questionsabout their recovery and memories of being in hospital, we laid out all of

the photographs and asked respondents to choose the one that best

captured their experience of being in hospital. They were asked to describe

the picture (wha t is this picture about?), to explain their reason for ta king

it, to say what memories it brought back and to explain what feelings it

gave them. This procedure was repeated for the whole set. Finally, they

were a sked to comment again on their photographic activity in hospital, to

say what they would have taken if they had had the opportunity and to

express their feelings about the photogra phs as presently displayed in frontof them.

Analysing photographs and interviews

B efore a nalysing some excerpts from one o f the interviews it is important

to say something about the relat ive status of the photogra phs as compared

with the material recorded on the audiota pes. Crucial to this is the fact that

choosing the objects and taking the pictures were things done by the

patients themselves. The act of photography arose out of the researchprocess but also withinthe experience of the patients who took up thecamera. This was made evident in the way that they spoke about the

activity. These comments were a vailable to us as fi eldworkers prior to any

analysis of the interviews. It was through hearing, at the time of photog-

raphy, the comments made about the ob jects being pictured, and a bout the

way of looking itself, that we realized the following. The analysis had to

include what the pat ients didto ma ke the pictures as well as wha t they saidin answer to our questions. Rather than being static frames that enclosed

pictures of things, the photographs continued to be interrogated and

justifi ed by the respondents from selection through to the end of the home

interview. This too was part of the study procedure, in which the investi-

gators encouraged respondents to reflect upon how they had undertaken

the photographic exercise, and to express their feelings about the pictures

in the home situation.

In this report we focus upon the home interview, though material from

both interviews is relevant to talk about the hospital experience. We had

also made field notes at the time of photography, though these notes form

only a subsidiary part of the present report. They formed a background to

the interview made later in the home setting. These notes were useful inhelping sensitize us to matters that might be raised in the course of the

second interview. With regard to the selection o f ma terial for ana lysis, for

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each respondent w e set out their photogra phs and made notes while listen-

ing to the tw o ta ped interviews. This means that wha t was recorded on the

tape was only part of the data for analysis. Because the photographs are

considered a resource for remembering, we set them out when listening to

the interviews and making notes from the tapes. The photogra phs are both

material objects and representations of the spaces and artefacts that werepictured.

Finally, the home interview itself was an episode in the course of the

respondents recovery, so that their manner of appearance and what they

said was evidence about their current state of health. In that sense, what

the investigator ta kes from the meeting is more tha n a record of memories

of a stay in hospital. Each interview (every interaction with another) is a

challenge to the person to demonstrate her recovered health, a nd we saw

remembering as being fashioned in the context of that challenge (Radley

and B illig, 1996).For these reasons, we re-present not only the way that this respondent

remembered, but also those experiences that made her remembering

significant in the interviews. This is not an essentialist position. However,

we insist that no understanding of how remembering takes place can be

grasped without an acknowledgement of the affective nature of that act.

So, while excerpts of talk are set out below as a way of structuring the

record, we do not privilege the words spoken in the interview. No fine-

grained analysis of text is offered here. The issues with which we are

concerned were made articulate by means of the interview conversation,but not by virtue of it a lone. The settings for the interviews (hospita l, home)

and the pictorial representa tions of spaces and objects made possible other

planes and other ways of signification. How the photographs were used as

resources and how the home setting itself was pertinent to the act of remem-

bering will be explored in the presentation to follow.

In choosing to focus upon one respondent we are privileging one set of

pictures and stories over those taken by the other patients. We acknow-

ledge that the range of photographs taken was wider than those shown

here, and that the respondents differed both in what they photographed

and in how they commented upon it (see Radley and Taylor (2003) for a

deta iled report o f this variation). What we seek to show in this art icle, by

means of a single case, are the ways in which such data might be further

analysed so as to place questions of recovery in a new light.

Expecting to remember

Ann (a pseudonym) wa s in her thirties, married and employed a s a hospita l

nurse. She had been admitted for surgery relating to a diagnosis ofcancer

for which she had received treatment prior to this hospital stay. Theoutcome of surgery would ha ve significant bearing upon the progression of

her disease and wha t this would mea n for her life in future. Her experience


135



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of b eing in hospital, and her later reflection upon it, wa s set in the context

of a n ongoing illness. This involved past and undoubtedly future treatment,

and unknowns that inevitably would arise from these interventions. This

meant that when we asked her to take photographs in the hospital we

invited her to turn upon her environment, to punctuate this passage of

experience by this extraord inary act of t aking pictures. This happened notjust in the freezing of moments in the photographs. It also occurred in the

implicit undertaking that she would be able to justify, later on, those things

tha t she had chosen to picture while in hospita l.

In the home interview we asked Ann to focus upon the photographs,

rather than just tell us about her time in hospital. In this way we not only

shaped her remembering, but also made explicit the justification of the

exercise in terms of w hat we had t a lked about one month previously. These

instructions directed her to the photographs as a resource, with the implicit

assumption that she would draw upon them in the way tha t people are usedto doing, using photography a s a cultural medium in order to capture the

past. B y laying out the photogra phs and a sking her to choose, successively,

which one was most significant in capturing her experience of being in

hospital we set up a task that opened up a number of possibilities about

how she might use the pictures in the course of recall. In a direct sense,

these memories became material for her to present herself as a kind of

patient, now recovered from her hospita l sta y. The act o f choosing a photo-

graph and speaking about it, handling it or passing on quickly to another

are disclosures of a kind as well. They refer to and sometimes exemplifyways of dealing with experiences and material in the course of establishing

a sense of t ime and place. In that sense, they are fra gments of recovery tha t

were being enacted in front o f us, so that their delineat ion depended upon

the interviewers response and the inclusion of this within the a nalysis. This

response is not apparent in the talk of the interview, but requires un-

covering in the course of the analysis to follow.

A list of Anns photographs is set out below. The order in hospital was

determined by her listing the photographs she wanted to take, something

done before she took the pictures. The interview conducted on the ward

wa s addressed to ea ch of the photogra phs in that order, each picture being

presented to her one at a time. At the home interview the presentation of

the photographs as a set meant tha t w e could compare what wa s said a bout

each one with reference to the order in which they were picked out. The

two orderings are shown below, using the titles given by Ann when she

listed them:

I n hospital A t home

1. Photograph of niece H ospita l bed*2. Toy gorilla* B athroom*

3. C uddly toys Sta irs to ward

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private room that she occupied. Photographs (Figures 15) with interview

commentaries are given below.

Interviewer: Which one would you say is most important I would like you to

choose one in capturing your experience of being in hospital?

Ann: Retrospectively? Talking about retrospectively, are you?

health: 7(2)

138

Fi gure 1Hospital bed (No.9).



12/32

Interviewer: Yes, if we now ta lk about tha t stay in hospital. Which picture would

you say best captures your experience? I would like you to choose the one you

want to talk about most.

Ann: (C hooses) I think the bed.

Interviewer: The bed.

Ann: Sort of in a negative way, its the way again going back to what I was

saying before about the whole experience of being in hospital. (Pause)

Interviewer: Look at that picture. What things do you want to draw attention

to? What do yo u wa nt to tell me that s in there in relation to what you have just

said?

Ann: (Pause) I think, all the equipment above the bed. Considering its a

bedroom, a place for you to be a ble to sleep, I mea n its cluttered with eq uipment

that, actually, would more hinder your sleep than anything. Its certainly not

comfortable. I mean again its a single bed. Im not used to sleeping in a single

bed. Its very functional, doesnt look very comfy at a ll. G ot the charts at t he

end. Which remind you tha t (pause) youre ill, or that somebody needs to wa tch

over you.

Interviewer: B ut its when you drew a ttention to the whole picture, you said the

bed a rea, its not a ny particular thing you mean?

Ann: No, no. I think that just conjures it up because thats where I spent most

of the two weeks.

Interviewer: So, what does it mean to you when you look at that? How do youremember the feeling there, what feelings does it bring back to you?

Ann: Frustration. Frustration, particularly. And Im feeling I mean its quite

frightening as well because of all the things that happened. When I first went

into tha t room, Id got pipes and t ubes coming out of me a ll over the place. And

so there were various restrictions lack of food and where you can walk, and

when you walk you drag all these things with you. And I just look at that now

and I can remember every single pipe and tube. And the experience of having

them taken out, something that q uite . . . (pause) . . . well, it really hurt when

they came out. And that, thinking of having to go through that, how anyo ne can

go through that as well and yet you do. And having people pop in all very

very nice nurses but, ba r one but people (unclear) say, Ill be ba ck aga in, um,

to take your dressing off, and then not turning up for another number of

hours, because a nurse takes priority. Which again is fine, but it tends to go, I

cant do anything now because Ive got to wait for the barium. Having to

constantly be on their (unclear) now I want to go and have a bath or I have

got visitors coming in, or things like that. Just having no freedom at all.

Interviewer: OK. Would you like to choose the next picture, the next one that

youd say brings back the hospital time, that expresses your experience?

Ann: (Chooses the photograph of the bathroom.)


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Interviewer: Tell me about the bathroom. Or that picture. What it shows and

wha t it brings back.

Ann: A gain, the first thing that fl ashed into my mind is trying to shower in there.

And trying to manoeuvre around all the pipes and the, um, machines, the dripstand a nd things that I wa s carrying around. And the drainage ba gs. Thats very

vivid, just looking at t hat . I can just see myself trying to and the very fi rst time

I actually showered there as well, cos [husband] was literally there having to

health: 7(2)

140

Fi gure 2Bathroom (No.10).



14/32

hold things and help me wa sh my hair, and a gain, I like to I like to have a bath

in the mornings and I like to (unclear) but that for the first few days I had

to wait till [husband] came in, because I didnt want anybody else to help me,

and I mean its very spartan and functional. Its got none of my comforts in,

that I normally have in the bathroom, smelly bubble ba th a nd things like that,

its got nothing of mine in there, apart from a towel and a bodywash.

Interviewer: So what do you think these places are for you if they dont have

these personal things? What do they feel like?

Ann: Well, q uite alien rea lly. Very a lien, uncomfo rta ble places.

Later on, when elaborating upon the problems of timing her use of the

ba throom in relat ion to the hospita l routine, she spontaneously recalled a n

incident that she had recounted to us at length during the hospital inter-

view.

Ann: . . . and ano ther thing is, that unpleasant incident in the shower room. Onday two or something, when the nurse told me not to lock the door in a very

unfriendly manner, and tha t w as q uite unpleasant.

Interviewer: And that stayed w ith you that memory, associated with tha t place?

Ann: But I think the main thing is about being helpless, and that its a very sort

of hos . . . I dont want to call it hostile . . .

These two photographs were the fi rst to be chosen in the context of the

injunction implicit in the question asking her to choose a most represen-

ta tive picture. She declared them bo th a s negative in respect o f the feelingstha t she had a bout them. Memories arising from the first, the bed area , are

q ualified with respect to wha t I w as saying before about the who le experi-

ence of being in hospital. This was a reference to her opening comment in

the interview that she did not have a clear memory of the time at all: I

think what stands out most tend to be the more the impression of it all,

really, the more negative memories, of being in there. This was said prior

to the photographs being laid out, so that it can be taken to refer to what

she understood as her spontaneous memories of the hospital stay. Once

instructed to look at the pictures and to describe them, her commentarybecomes quite specific with regard to the objects identified, which are

referred to in the present tense. The photographs denote these objects (the

equipment, the chart s) which are then discussed in relat ion to the negat ive

feelings that she says characterize her memory of her stay. The hostility

of the setting (its clutter, its spartan nature) is used to define its alien char-

acter that remains as an ongoing feature of the hospital, a place that was

and remains unlike home.

Viewing these photographs disrupts the separation of then and now, of

the hospital and the home. Talking about them is both a commentary onwhat is there in front of her (what is shown now) and on what she recol-

lects about them. The feelings she has about the pictures are felt there and

then in the interview (And Im feeling I mean its quite frightening as


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well because of all the things that happened). However, these emotions

are ma de present through being related within accounts of wha t ha ppened

in the past (When I fi rst went into tha t room, Id got pipes and tubes coming

out of me a ll over the place. And I just look a t tha t now and I can remember

every single pipe and tube). Her reference to the act of looking at the

photograph positions the feeling of fright as a now reaction to what isportrayed. We do not ta ke literally the idea tha t she can remember every

single pipe and tube, but see this as a claim to the way in which looking

at the pictures provides material to f acilita te the justifica tion of the overa ll

feeling about the hospital experience. Speaking about the photographs

involves not only talking about what they depict, but making reference to

how she is remembering. It is the effect on her in the interview that justi-

fies a photographs relevance to the past. So she says that the first thing

that flashed into my mind and thats very vivid, just looking at that. I can

just see myself trying to . . .. These references to seeing oneself in tha t situ-ation, as if the past were there in the present, are related to the strength

of feeling tha t looking a t the picture provokes. Note, how ever, that this is

not simply a rhetorical device intended to persuade the interviewer o f the

relevance of the picture content. While it is certainly this too, in that Ann

has been asked to justify her choice of photograph (this is the most signifi-

cant one because . . .), the presence of the past in the interview is exempli-

fied in her use of the present tense to talk about her reaction to what she

is looking at.

It is interesting to note tha t these two photographs were ta ken to depictparticular spaces. These spaces are filled with objects that allow multiple

reference to treatment and care. But they are also the spaces that Ann

occupied over time and in relat ion to which her bodily efforts a nd discom-

forts were experienced. While pictures of specific objects can trigger

unwanted memories (we had several examples of this in the study) pictur-

ing of a space can also position the viewer by means of its composition of

distances, angles and arrangements. This re-representation of what it felt

like to be dependent or constrained makes possible an apparent coales-

cence of signifier and signified, so that the photograph is of the situation

and not merely about it. However, this coalescence is not a sufficient

description of wha t A nn is doing in her commentary. There is a change of

direction of movement in this reference, in that the depiction by discursive

referent over object no longer holds dominance. Instead, what can be

termed the reactivation of the affective setting describes the power of the

signified to threaten to overcome the signifier. It is as if the object stares

back, because the pictures of the bed and of the bathroom exemplifyorshow forth chara cteristics that they possess (G oodma n, 1968). This kind of

signification has been described often in relation to pictures of pain or

suffering, where the portra yal o f these states signifies not just through theirbeing denoted, but through showing or exemplifying them as well. Photo-

graphs of technology related to pain and suffering can also have this effect,

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as with the display of instruments of torture (Sca rry, 1985). Therefore, it is

not surprising that pictures of spaces in which one had to bear suffering

and uncertainty ab out o nes survival should a lso signify in this way.

The importa nce of dra wing out this point is tha t one can begin to relate

the different ways in which Ann mad e the photographs signify, to the kinds

of remembering that she makes evident. She makes clear that these twophotogra phs are strongly negative pictures for her, a nd goes on to identify

(in response to questions from the interviewer) which features of the

picture might be focally involved. She gives two important examples in the

earlier excerpts. One relat es to the chart shown at the end of the bed, which

reminds you tha t (pause) youre ill, or that somebody needs to w at ch over

you. Earlier on, in the hospital interview, she told us that the chart was

something from which she actively tried to divorce herself. She spoke at

tha t time of sitting so that she could not see the equipment above the bed,

in order to escape from the indignity of being ill.The chart, and the bed itself, were not merely physical objects caught in

the photograph but were already signifiers of her attempts at forgetting

during her time in hospital. The chart evokes an affective setting that does

more tha n remind her of the hospita l as a physical location. It reminds her

of whyshe was in hospita l something tha t she wa s trying at t he time (albeitvainly) to forget. One might go further and say that it reminds her of theact of tr ying to forget. In that sense, what is frightening is not merely therevivificat ion of being in a hostile environment, but the threat of being once

more engulfed by feelings that the viewing of the photographs makespossible.

The photograph of the bathroom w as one of the tw o A nn designated a s

most representat ive of her stay during the interview on the hospital wa rd.

The bathroom picture was clearly negative, both for reasons of its power

to signify her dependence and illness condition, and also because of it

having been a site of a dispute with a nurse. In the first instance, she

explained in the hospital that while she was lucky to have a private

bathroom,

Its very much adapted for the frail, elderly and very unwell, but its a reminderthat Ive needed all these bars and things. Someone of my age shouldnt need

them. Its a horrible feeling to have been in that position, needing all those

trappings.

This excerpt shows that the mere sight of these things reminds her of more

than a specific time and a place, of more than a spatio-temporal context.

It brings ba ck in a vivid wa y a state of b eing of ma king an effort to a void,

put aside or look aw ay from things tha t were frightening at tha t time. What

these two pictures denoteare physical spaces in the hospital, but what they

project or exemplifyare affective settings (feelings) relating to beingsubject to the medical regime.

It is not just pictures of spaces that can do this. Equally powerful, we


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presume, would be photographs that patients were not allowed to take, in

this case those of people who were involved with Anns hospita l sta y. When

in hospital she had told the interviewer the story of the nurse who scolded

her for locking the bathroom door, and how this had upset her. At home

the mere mention of this story, having been shared earlier with the inter-

viewer, w as used to justify a gain her a ntipathy t o the picture, her feelingsof dislike for the depiction of that place. At the end of the interview Ann

returned to this episode as a way of explaining that people, rather than

photographs of objects, were more important in triggering unwanted

memories of her hospital sta y. She said a bout that nurse, I w ould only have

to see her and immediately I would feel that humiliation I felt at first, and

then anger. This quotation shows in the mention of the humiliation I

felt at first her need to rid herself of unwanted memories in order to

distance herself actively from the hospital stay.

This initial analysis of Anns comments suggests that the interview (thequestions and the photographs) set up a tension around her having to

remember what she was trying to forget. This tension is manifested in her

acknowledgement that the photographs engaged her again in a world of

anxiety and potential chaos, while at the same time they were a resource

for creating a narra tive dista nce from the hospita l. The strength of feeling

that she describes indicates an involuntary undoing of the temporal sepa-

rations on which recovery is premised, the fabrication of a now that is

distant from then. That is why the objects depicted are no more in the

past than they are in the photographs. It is not a real world from thepast that threatens to break in so much as her being repositioned into a

state w here narra tive reconstruction is made diffi cult and the establishment

of present truths (about recovery) are left fragile (Williams, 1984). What

these two negative photographs raise is not just a n anxiety set in the past,

but something, a-temporal, embracing as it were her present and future

too. It is this anxiety that retelling counters. By re-presenting features of

the hospital using the photographic depictions, remembering figures Ann

as the na rrator w ho ha s these feelings, and potentially can dista nce herself

from them. H owever, for Ann the memories of w hat hospita l was like could

never be mere memories so long as her future prognosis and her state of

health were in doubt (which they were at the time of interview). 3

Re-presentation,the movement of objects and temporaldistance

The photographs constituting the ma teria ls of this study were, like some of

the objects they represented, resituated in the homes of the patients. This

does not mean that the meanings they had in the hospital were simply

replaced by those that the patients gave them later on (Pink, 2000). In thissection we show that ta lk about recovery involves, as its aim, the dista ncing

of the hospital experience from the interview situation. The establishment

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of this distance involves both a remaking of the past as well as a fashion-

ing of the present, each hinging upon the practical requirement to estab-

lish oneself as a credible and worthy individual (Williams, 1993). As part

of this, the movement of objects from home to hospital and vice versa

played a n important role. To give an example of where respondents saw

this as done successfully, we discuss the photograph that Ann chose assecond mo st importa nt in the hospital, though only eighth in rank order a t

the home interview. This was a picture of a toy gorilla, something she said

in hospital ha d been brought in by her husband. They shared jokes about

this gorilla; it had accompanied her on previous stays in hospital. It helped

her, she said, to retain a sense of humour and it brings ba ck your relat ion-

ship. The toy gorilla stood for a relationship with a significant other, and

established a presence in the clinical emptiness of the hospital room that

could provide her with support and comfort. B y the time of the home inter-

view, the supportive work that the toy gorilla made possible wa s completedand seen as over.

Interviewer: Which would be the next photograph best representing your stay

in hospital?

Ann: That gorilla (laughs). No association with the hospital at all. Its strange

because it was with me in hospital three and a half years ago, and again this

time. Its now upsta irs at the end of my bed. A nd when I a m making my bed in

the morning I do not think of anything to do with hospital at all.

Interviewer: What job did it do in hospital, being with you?Ann: P art o f bringing some of my home comforts, personal objects, just to . . .

more comforting. One or two things that were yours from the home surround-

ings, your home environment . . . H aving it in hospital, it w as quite comforting,

home wasnt too fa r awa y. A bit of reassurance really . . . A kind of substitute

for tha t constant comfort a nd reassurance that yo u get when your partners there.

Quite a comfort really and it reminds me of our relationship as well.

Interviewer: So when you look at it (the photograph), it is not associated with

hospital?

Ann: No, I think I just think of him at the end of my bed. Nothing to do withhospital.

In this exchange, Ann separates out two representations of the toy gorilla

depicted in the photogra ph. One refers to the gorilla in the hospita l, sitting

in the chair. The other is the (same) gorilla that sits on her bed at home.

It is, one suspects, to the latter that she points, laughingly (That gorilla),

when identifying the object of the photograph. It is this object, in the

present, that she elaborates upon to distinguish it from the hospital

surroundings and of herself from tha t time. She does not think of a nything

to do with hospital (she is not reminded) when she sees and handles thegorilla, and so its appeara nce in the picture is responded to in a similar wa y.

In being nothing to do with the hospital the toy gorilla symbolizes the


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establishment of a healthier present, one tha t is distant from the hospital,

both spatially and temporally.

It should be noted that the hospital is mentioned here almost by its

absence. It is something she is not reminded of, though aspects of it areclearly depicted in the photograph. As we shall see later, this is partly a

consequence of the exchange between interviewer and respondent, but it

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Fi gure 3Toy gorilla (No.2).



20/32

highlights the fact that all that is represented is not discussed. In this case,

the double representat ion of the toy gorilla, made possible by its physical

relocation, enables the separation of time and place so that her time in

hospital is backgrounded. This demonstrates that letting go of difficult

memories is facilitated, or made possible even, by a process of transposi-

tion revealed through Anns inspection of her photogra phs.The importa nce of spat ial transforma tion as a ba ckground to the viewing

of the photographs needs to be emphasized. This is ano ther way of saying

that the re-viewing of the pictures took place not from some abstract

viewing position but in the context of an ongoing practice in which Ann

endea voured to recover her healthy life. In the hospital setting these posses-

sions are marked out as exceptional to the clinical environment. Looking

at the picture that Ann took, it shows the to y gorilla sitting on a pillow, on

a chair, with its arms outstretched. It at ta ins a kind of presence so that she

said visitors would remark upon it. In that setting it is marked out by itssingularity, contrasting with the coldness of the clinical setting. It signifies,

in its presence, by exemplifying properties of warmth and cuddliness. (It

does not merely denote these properties, but also ow ns and displays them.)

Ann said that visitors would stroke it, or that she would touch it while she

spoke to them. H owever, once ba ck at the end of her bed, its singularity is

compromised by the setting of which it is a part, where (we presume) it

blends with the ba ckground of bedding and home comforts. The reporting

of its physical passage into and out o f the hospita l setting facilita tes a mobile

narra tive that t akes Ann into and out o f the hospita l time and delivers herback home, now at the time of the interview, with the gorilla on the bed,

upstairs.

These reports suggest that objects are moved and reflected upon in the

course of people seeking to forget their time in hospital. As we shall show,

people often cannot avoid remembering what happened when they were

in hospital and why they were in there. The question arises, what actions

do people ta ke to fa shion the course and the form of tha t recall? We might

note the case of one respondent who chose to keep part of the hospital

technology specifi cally as a sign tha t his period of illness wa s not yet o ver.

He was a medical patient who had spent some weeks in the hospital for

tests, and had retained one of his photographed objects since his discharge.

It wa s his plastic identity bra celet, something kept in a draw er at home. H e

said that it would only be destroyed w hen his disease wa s fina lly diagnosed

and cured.

In A nns case she had not kept a n item of hospita l equipment, but dried

some roses from a bunch that had been sent by friends while she was on

the w ard . The picture she took of the fl owers also included, inadvertently,

the clinical waste bin in her room. In hospital she said that she had

photogra phed the roses because they showed peoples feelings for her. A tthe time she also remarked briefly upon the clinical waste bin, and how it

was incongruous having flowers near clinical things.


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Interviewer: What do they (the flowers) bring back to you about the hospital

experience?

Ann: How kind everybody was really. It feels quite a n ice warm feeling. This

bunch here were my f avourite, but also reminded me of all the other fl owers I

got. B ut Ive a ctually dried these flow ers since. And even though I remember

that they were brought into hospital, because I like them so much, I dont

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Fi gure 4Bunch of roses (No.4).



22/32

necessarily associate them with anything negative. A nice warm feeling. They

are from friends, Ive got a lot of support.

Interviewer: A nything else in tha t picture you wa nt to remark upon?

Ann: Well, you can a lso see the clinical wa ste bag o n the litter bin, and just above

there is the sharps bin, as well. Which is absolutely huge. That sharps bin ishuge. The ones I ha ve in my clinical practice are . . . that one is absolutely huge.

Interviewer: Maybe they dont need to empty it so often?

Ann: Well, thats the other thing. You know that that will still be in that room

now, and, I bet that several people have been in that room since Ive left, and

the same things have been in there which has just been topped up by sharps

that have been used on o ther people. I just w onder why they have such a huge

. . . why they cant put a smaller one. Thats very strange actually tha t sharps

bin, because there would have already been remnants of other people in the

room w hen I go t in there, even though they ha d changed the bed linen and giventhe sink a w ash round and proba bly swept the fl oor a nd given the shower room

a wa sh out. B ut tha t (points) its still a reminder that t here was somebody else

there and their stuff was in there, and my stuff will still be in there, because I

know for sure it wont be emptied. Theres no point in having such a big bin to

discard it whether its full . . . Thats going to be there for many months to come.

The exchange reported in this excerpt shows how remembering is directed

by the interviewer and by the respondents understa nding of wha t the ta sk

requires. This explains the initial focus upon the flowers the subject of

the photogra ph tha t a re centrally placed in the frame, though sandwichedbetween the two items for collecting clinical waste. The fact that, during

the hospital interview, the interviewer had noted Anns remark about the

clinical waste bin prompts him to ask whether there is more in the picture

to comment upon. This gives rise to her pointing up the size of the bin used

to collect used needles (sharps) and then to go on to speculat e about the

consequences of this for ma rking the presence of pat ients who, ea ch in their

turn, occupy the room. (She says this because she is also a nurse.) This is

an interesting comment because it arises only when she has left that occu-

pancy, to become one of the many pa tients who have stayed there. It is no

longer her bin but in containing the remnants of her clinical wa ste retains

something of her time in the room. This seemed to the interviewer a spon-

taneous reflection, made possible only by her re-viewing the detail of a

photograph that actually focused upon something else entirely. The words

Thats very strange actually suggest a realization on her part about the

implications of the size of the bin, and hence the contemplat ion of a n aspect

of herself remaining (forever) in that hospita l context. From the comments

she makes it would seem that this is an intriguing rather than an anxiety-

provoking image. Rather than drawing her back into the hospital setting,

the objectification of her clinical waste as that which is left behind (withthat of all the other patients) allows a distancing of herself now from

then. B ut this dista ncing comes not just from the contra sting of t hen and


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now. It arises from the projection of a timelessness about the bin and its

contents, a q ualitatively different tempora l experience from tha t evoked by

the revivification of what it was like to be there at the time, living throughthose particular moments. It is not a memory of an actual event or even

(as far as we knew) a remembering of something thought about during

Anns time in the room.What is going on here when A nn looks at these photogra phs? I f it is an

act of remembering, it is one tha t is also situated w ithin the interview that

is taking place. She tells about what might provoke negative memories and

what no longer reminds her of the hospita l. These commentaries upon how

and when she remembers are indicative of an emotional separation from

the context of their fabrication. This is shown in the manner of how she

said them, in one case with a laugh and in the other with a quizzical

comment . What is sa id in these cases is not just a ma tter of depicting a past

but reflects an effort to establish distance between then and now. Thepast tha t (ha rdly) comes into view in these comments is there because Ann

is able to detach the depictions of the toy gorilla and the flowers from the

objects that were there in the hospita l setting. B y do ing this she esta blishes

for the toy gorilla a nd for the fl owers a virtual hospital existence, which in

their turn signify a different time, a different place.

In her commentary upon the sharps bin she describes a kind of reverse

movement of objects, so that instead of bringing something home from

hospital she leaves something of herself behind in the bin, the clinical

waste associated with her treatment. What this photograph cannot show but by implication can refer to a re her sharps tha t a re left behind, sepa-

rated now from her and her present situation. This construction of what

she calls a strange(by which we can read intriguing) idea of patientsclinical waste accumulating in the bin produces an impersonal world of

objects removed from her a ct of taking the picture. The photogra ph shows

where people have been, prior to and since her stay in the roo m. The narra -

tion o f the photogra ph as depicting a place existing prior t o a nd subsequent

to her treatment ma kes it strange in relation to her episode o f illness and

thence to her situat ion now, some w eeks af ter discharge.

In sum, Anns interpretat ion of these photographs as not reminding her

of hospital (or of her hospital stay) refers to a distinction betw een worlds,

a difference reproduced by the movement of ob jects to a nd from hospital.

This allows a double depiction, in which the original photographobject

relationship from hospital is displaced by reference to the object in the

home context. It is this that is used by her to project this sense of a separ-

ation of then from now. With that separation comes the possibility of

emphasizing positive aspects of her hospital stay, something that also

projected into the interview an image of her as a person making a good

recovery.

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Territories of anticipation

At the end of the home interview Ann made clear that the photographs,

though ta ken by her, were not the only (or even the most) evocative of the

hospital experience. She said that other people talking to her about her

time in hospital and asking about her state of health were more likely totrigger unwa nted memories. It w as people and their ta lk not things that

apparently threatened her work of recovery. The storied dista ncing of self

from hospital, the narra tive form itself, though it locates the past a s separa te

in relat ion to the present, also opens up the opportunity for o thers to spoil

this in their questioning. She said that those close to her, such as relatives

and friends who visited in hospital, sometimes did this inadvertently. I t w as

when these people invited her to remember incidents that had occurred

when they ha d visited her on the ward tha t such memories returned. This

unwanted prompting underlines the point that remembering is a collective

act, and that in such cases the propensity for others to provoke images is

obviously increased.

However, stories told and shared by people who were there with the

person a re not free na rrat ives but embodied acts. Towards the end of the

interview A nn told of meeting again one of the nurses who w as to ta ke out

one of her drainage bags:

When I saw her, I could just see myself sitting back on the bed and hanging

aro und wa iting she had to go o ff fo r 10 minutes just sitting there and feeling

quite a pprehensive ab out the procedure, will it hurt, what have I got t o do , etc.?

And there were va rious people coming, as I wa s alwa ys quite conscious of people

visiting. So that made me feel quite apprehensive and anxious. So its definitely

people.

As Ann says (When I saw her), at the first sightof this nurse thesememories came back (I could just see myself), so that the effective

contrast is not of people as compared with objects, but the way in which

events are signified. In this respect the nurse-as-seen is part o f the hospital

setting though as a potential co-rememberer her potential to raise

unwa nted memories is extended a nd deepened. The threat to locating the

past in the present lies both w ith the reappeara nce of part s of the physical

setting (including people who were there), and with its representation

through discourse or other forms of portrayal, such as photographs.

We now wish to show how the use of these photographs illustrates the

disassembly and mobility of the setting in relation to spoiling recovery.

To do this we consider a photograph that Ann to ok of a fra med photo-

graph. This picture portrayed her niece, and was designated as the most

importa nt photogra ph at tha t time because, I ts good to have a picture tha t

reminds me of a good relationship. Its helpful to see a smiling face. This

picture was positioned on her bedside table in her hospital room and shesaid that she looked at it a lot. This object along with the toy gorilla

had been brought into hospital to sustain her during a difficult time. In this


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she was similar to some other patients who spoke about objects they had

brought as being resources used to establish continuity throughout their

hospita l stay.

D uring the home interview, Ann chose this photogra ph of her niece as

the fourth one that best signified her time in hospital.

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Fi gure 5Photograph of niece (No.1).



26/32


27/32

the picture frame, Anns need to justify and to explain her innocence in

regard to the damage is the directional line that enables her to construct

(to remember) the seriousness of her condition and the (then) uncerta inty

of her future after surgery. The location o f the past a s a separa te, singular

episode is a desirable aim at best: it is not easily achieved, if only because

it must sometimes be undone by the person in order to re-establish herselfin a particular way in the present.

As with the photograph of the toy gorilla, this picture signifies in two

ways, one concerning the picture within of her niece and one concern-

ing the frame with its markings. However, unlike the toy gorilla picture,

these two depictions are o f differentobjects, so tha t she has to make explicitthe work she must do to divorce the two. One reason for this narrative

work is tha t one object the fra me is signifi ed with respect to both hospita l

and to her home life. It is not because the separation of past and present

is incomplete that this is made a significant occurrence. Instead, thishappens because the territory that is opened up by this separation is

subject to intrusions of the kind referred to above. For example, because

it is open to inspection b y o thers, they might well remark upon the f rame,

making remarks that could threaten to introduce actions and events from

her time in hospital that Ann would probably not wish to re-examine.

We suggest the use of the word territory to refer to the separation of

past from present, and of present from future. It is the narrat ive construc-

tion o f distance from the (negat ive) a ffective setting tha t opens up this space

to b eing crossed by events. B ecause remembering is social, a retelling forothers, this territory is also subject to their interpolations, to being

traversed by them, with all the risks that this entails. The work that Ann

does to justify her inability to prevent the damage to the picture frame

shows her recognition of one such risk, her potent ial culpab ility even in the

context of her being on the hospital wa rd. H er rationa le for why the picture

frame was damaged is testimony to how the past is not just displaced in

recovery, but is given para llel forms in the considera tion of w hat might, but

did not happen. At any time, we might need to justify the present (e.g. the

notched picture belonging to ones brother). To do this requires more than

just a separation from a previous setting, as if the hospital experience was

a detachable past. Instead, the territory opened up by recall needs to be

reoccupied whenever called for (e.g. by others) in order that Ann can

art iculate wha t might have been, what ought to have but could not be. Such

spoiled time must always be accounted for.

Discussion

While this study confirms that remembering, using photographs, is a

collaborative undertaking (as is all photography for remembering), and,while we have shown the importance of affective imagery in recall, the wa y

that Ann remembered only certain things, and in a certain way, is clearly

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significant. As w ith some (but no t a ll) of the interviews, hers were ma rked

by a tension between the interviewers aim of encouraging memories and

that of the respondent to contain them. The latter arose from the strong

negative feelings evoked by remembering being on the ward and the

reasons for the pat ients a dmission to hospital. Several respondents ma de

it clear that their recovery necessarily involved the forgetting of certainexperiences, and the sealing off of the hospital time from their present life.

All of t he responses to the photogra phs can be seen as a potential disrup-

tion to this a im. While this is a part icular occurrence, it is not unique to the

use of photogra phy as a research technique. There are other interventions

(e.g. talk) and reflections upon w hat has and is happening in hospita l, and

what is planned after discharge. Any of these interventions contribute to

the hospital experience not being a sealed-off episode. It can later be madeto seem so, and tha t, we contend, is part o f the work of recovery. Inevitably,

therefore, remembering ones time in hospital involves a sort of forgetting.H owever, some pat ients might wish to recall, or rather to learn a new a bout

what ha ppened to them, especially if, as in D avid R iers (2000) case, they

have a professiona l framework in which to cast their experience.

This study underlines the importa nce of t he role o f remembering in the

reconstruction of ones biography following treatment for serious disease

(Williams, 1984). If it is correct tha t one of the key a venues to an under-

standing of the person is through memory, then this topic is particularly

important for grasping what it means to recover health in the modern

world.This suggestion fi nds echoes in the excerpts that we ha ve offered o f Anns

memories of her stay in hospital. It sets up the question of how to relate

this issue of the need to forget with the kinds of remembering she showed

in response to looking at the photographs. We have suggested that remem-

bering in the cause of esta blishing a healthy recovery (a biographical repa ir)

involves the establishment of present from past in a distance separating

narrator from setting. Added to this, we have proposed that remembering

and forgetting are facilitated by the movement of material objects and the

re-representation of both objects and people. In summary terms, the idea

of achieving distance from the hospital experience was seen as a n import-

ant aim of Anns narrative, while still enabling her to re-enter this terri-

tory safely, to explain and to justify what occurred there. This safety relates

to the danger of being overcome by the feelings that looking at certain

pictures provoked. We have said that this overcoming can be understood

as a reversal of denota tion, in which the photograph projects the powers it

possesses, threatening to fi ll the viewer/pat ient w ith its ga ze. This

conclusion reaches the margins of what we can infer on the basis of the

material w e have presented in this article.

However, we do need to take up the question of what this conclusionimplies for the a ffective setting that has been referred to in different terms

during this analysis (Anns impression of it all). In his seminal analysis of


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the role of images during remembering, the social psychologist Frederick

B artlett proposed the following. H e said tha t a n image allows one to

ta ke out of its setting something that happened a yea r ago, reinstat e it with much

if not all of its individuality unimpaired, combine it with something that

happened yesterday, and use them both to help him to solve a problem with

which he is confronted today. (1932: 219)

What , then, in this study is the image t o which meaning is given? D o w e

mean here the perceived content of the picture? C ommonly the word image

is used to mean what the picture shows. The photograph as metaphor is

employed in the description of (mental) images that appear during auto-

biographical remembering. It has been said tha t images act like snapshots,

and that this imagery is common to all protocols of everyday remembering

(Conway, 1990: 127). However, for Bartlett the image described a stage in

the act of remembering, a feeling about the material characterised by doubt,hesitation, surprise, astonishment, confidence, dislike, repulsion and so on

(1932: 207). These terms are worth repeating in full in order to show their

implications for what can be described: what can be remembered about,

and what can be remembered for. The inclination to remember is affect

laden not only because of the recognition of what was in the past, but also

because of the need to fulfil the demands of the present. These demands

relate to wha t we have described a s the excursions (with a ssociated risks and

opportunities) that must be made into the territory opened up to others by

their narrative construction of past and present. Whatever the photographsin this study depicted, it was not images in Bartletts sense. For that reason

we have not used the word image in talking about the pictures content.

Rather than using a visual metaphor of memory images as pictures,

what needs to be emphasized is the uncertainty and potential that lies in

respondents having to reach out simultaneously to past and present. This

conception of images owes more to Walter Benjamins proposals than to

theories from psychology or f rom a rt history (Weigel, 1996). For B enjamin

an image wa s not a visual or pictorial thing but that in which the ha s-been

comes together in a fla sh with the Now to form a constellation (B enjamin,

cited in Weigel, 1996: 50). In their propensity to configure experience,images have a fabricating, potentially communicative and ultimately

political role, especially at times of social change. From this perspective,

they a re no longer taken to give a full and unbiased representat ion of events

(as with a realist treatment of memory) but rather re-present a displace-

ment of experience (Abbas, 1989). It is not just that images are historical

but that , for B enjamin, history is imagistic: the past is to be gra sped through

images: Here we find a double point: an historical moment can be under-

stood in terms of the images that become legible at that moment; at the

same time, images become legible only a t a criticalmoment (Abba s, 1989:59, emphasis in original). Surgery, with its journey into and out of

unconsciousness, involving intrusions of the body that are known of but

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will not be experienced by the anaesthetized patient, is just such a critical

moment (R adley, 1996). R ecovery is a t ime during which such images might

well become legible, especially so if one can keep a trace of that experi-

ence. This crisis of experience/image is precisely the point on which the

issues of recovery from surgery, remembering and photography can be

brought together in a potentially useful way.To what extent, then, was Anns remembering imagistic in B enjamins

sense? What is clear from her comments is that the photographs do not

show, directly, the images to which Benjamin referred and to which Ann

alluded in her comments. Even in the terms used by B artlett (1932) the

memory image that arises is an extensive scheme, referring to an affec-

tive relat ionship in a setting. It sets up a propensity to move awa y from or

towards something. In the case of memories of the hospital stay these are

frequently (but not always) negative. However, they are often elusive to

explication. What the photographs depicted were scenes that occasionallytriggered such affective responses, in relation to which the demands of

the interview led to Anns greater or lesser articulation of her need to

distance herself from the feelings provoked. A t the ba ck of this, how ever,

is the idea of the critical moment as a time that makes certain images

legible. It is possible that this also underlay other patients choices of what

to photograph in the first place, although they often said that the photo-

graphs could not capture their true experience. At best the photographs

became visual cues to the setting out of which they were sampled. As a

result, the constructive justification of the images that the photographsmade possible became the context that gave these images their meaning.

In that sense, it is a mista ke to speak o f A nn read ing her photogra phs, or

even placing an interpretation upon them. She made use of her photo-

graphs in different ways, but always as bridges to and from an imagined

projection of recovery from illness.

Finally, it is important to avoid the conclusion that the aim of recovery

is forgetting, pure and simple. This is not the case. Regarding some of her

hospita l experiences, A nn was w illing to tell about moments of anxiety and

fea r. The aim of remembering (in this case at least) was the re-presentat ion

of displaced experience tha t Ann wa nted to speak abo ut, so tha t we might

understand. This re-presentation was not driven merely by a neutralizing

of a traumatic experience, but should be understood as a communicative

act, wherein one shows to another person what one went through, how it

mattered and why (Frank, 1995). This last point confirms that remember-

ing in this context is part o f a w ider project of recovery in which the pat ient

involves others to a greater or lesser degree.

Notes

1. La ck of space forbids any det ailed discussion of photo graphy as social practicein this article. U seful sources include tho se by Sont ag (1979), B erger and Mohr

(1982) and Wells (2000).


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2. The decision to interview pa tients four weeks after discharge was ba sed upon

the belief that this would present an optimum time for them to feel removed

from the hospital experience and yet ab le to ma ke rich responses to their

photo graphs. We do no t claim tha t this period represents the best (or only) time

from w hich to study the process of recovery in detail.

3. Ann died, from cancer, 18 months later.

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