Film Response: Angela Singer's Importance

Just this morning I watched a movie called For Memory's Sake that I found kind of depressing. The film documented, in a short 30 minutes, the photographs of Angela Singer. Having no formal or technical education in the craft of photography, she taught her self how to expose film at a young age and continued taking photos throughout her life. Most, if not all of her subject matter is personal in nature; she takes photos of everyday occurrences, family gatherings, her son's gravestone, the slow death of her husband to pancreatic cancer. And according to her, most of her pictures were taken within 20 miles of her house. She photographs incessantly, daily, and does so simply for the sake of memory. She says in the film, "I don't go to the mailbox without my camera."

From my perspective this kind of cataloging of everyday images is exactly why point-and-shoot cameras were invented. For her purpose, of preserving the innumerable moments in her life, her method of photographing constantly is perfect. I however, don't share Angela Singer's therapeutic need to photograph everything I adore or appreciate. I write instead.

Unlike Angela Singer's daughter, who narrated and directed the film, I don't like to think about her photography as "a way of coping with domestic life." I like to think at least, that Singer was celebrating life, domestic or not, with every picture she took. To some extent we are all escapists, seeking that little bit of solace or retreat that enables us to cope with the rest of the day. But in the end I hope that photographs, especially the thousands that singer took memorialize her life, don't exist solely as a means of "coping."

The photos that Angela Singer took are important to her, that's why she took them. I think that curators and critics viewing them will naturally imbue meaning into them, most likely meaning which Singer herself never intended. The true significance of the photos is usually something only she, and possibly her immediate family can understand. While I admit this is not always the case, especially not so in the photos she took over the course of her husbands death, most of her photos lack an easily readable purpose. And I have to say, for example, I don't see the point in collecting pictures of every birthday cake she blows the candles out on.

In short, I don't think that the pictures are important outside of being Angela Singers personal archive. The importance of her photos is much greater to those who experienced the captured moments with her than it is to most of the public. Furthermore, people who don't know Singer, but who lived in the same town will find them more significant than any outsider who comes to see them. For me, here in Arizona they are not very significant.