Why does one constantly mimic herself in front of the lens all the time?
In any case, her image will appear as someone else.
Photograph seems like a mirror with memory.
What happens if herself never coincides with her image…
“Forget Me Not” is a short story about a puppet-like girl, Leyla Çiftçıkmaz who is obsessed with taking photographs of herself and an old-wise antique shop owner, Koper Kırıkkanat who is collecting old dispossessed photographs. Everytime Leyla takes a Polaroid photo of herself, she encounters portraits of strangers! Fortunately antique shop owner knows by hearth one of the strangers she sees in her photos.
“Forget Me Not” seeks the theme death in old photographs. Mostly inspired by the French philosopher Roland Barthes’s famous book Camera Lucida, this short film depends on critical literature on photography.
Synopsis
None was what she sought; with none could she identify herself.
Yet each time, she thought that the resulting photograph would tell her who she was…
“Forget Me Not” starts with the image of a waste-paper gatherer who collects thrown papers and old materials from the bins. Views of the man are such as to define the network of waste paper gathering and dispossessed material collecting.
The film is about the mental journey of the character Leyla. Her image never coincides with herself. Leyla continuously takes her own instant photos using a Polaroid camera and takes notes under those photos. Oftenly she gets upset of what she sees and throws away the photos every time. That is because she sees an utterly different person instead of her own image in herself portraits. In the photos, she sometimes sees people she knows and sometimes, persons she never met, instead of herself. As she drops the photos, her loneliness grows. The discarded photos of Leyla reach the antique shop owner via the wastepaper gatherer. Thus, we meet the second important character of the film, the antique dealer Mr. Koper who in his sixties. We can define Mr. Koper as an expert of human nature. He is someone who can journey not only to the pasts of objects, but also to the pasts of people. The Polaroid photos of Leyla, that have no antique value somehow triggers Mr. Koper to face his own past. Koper who did take a photo of his lover’s last moment before she dies has never been able to accept this death. To him, death and photography are much closed to each other…
After discovering the strange relationship of Leyla with her own photographic image, Mr. Koper compiles all photos of Leyla in a photo album that is special for him and creates a fictional past sought by her. The story eventuates in that Leyla reaches her own image by the help of Mr. Koper and Koper leaves his past behind by the help of Leyla.
Theoretical Framework
The main concept sought by the story of the film is the connection between photography and death, the weird act of posing and the photograph’s ability to turn an individual into an object. The story told by this short film draws inspiration from the existing critical theory on photography, in this context; from some ideas developed by famous theoreticians such as Roland Barthes, Susan Sonntag, Geofrey Batchen and Kaja Silverman. Here are some:
(…) what I want is a ceaseless coincidence of my image shoved and changed by the place and age (mobile) among the numerous variable photos with (that deep) “myself”. However, the converse should be mentioned: Myself” never coincidences with my image; because, my image is heavy, immobile and stubborn (therefore, society does not leave it) and “myself” ise light, divided and scattered. (Barthes, Roland: 2000).
In the early photographs, those who want to appear like alive in the final image should pose like a dead. (Batchen, Geoffrey: 2004)
A photograph is a mirror with memory according to Oliver Wendell Holmes. (Qtd in Batchen, Geoffrey: 2004)
When we feel the social gaze focused upon us, we feel photographically framed. However the converse is also true: when a real camera is trained upon us, we feel ourselves subjectively constituted, as if the resulting photograph could somehow determine “who” we are. (Silverman, Kaja: 1996)
Now, once I feel myself observed by the lens, everything changes: I constitute myself in the process of “posing,” I instantaneously make another body of myself, I transform myself in advance into an image. This transformation is an active one: I feel that the Photograph creates my body or mortifies it, according to its caprice. (Barthes, Roland: 2000)
In front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am, the one I want others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit his art. In other words, a strange action: I do not stop imitating myself (…) I am neither subject nor object but a subject who feels he is becoming an object: I then experience a micro version of death (of parenthesis): I am truly becoming a specter” (Barthes, Roland: 2000).
Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. 1981. Trans. Richard Howard. London: Vintage, 2000.
Batchen. Geoffrey Photography and Remembrance. New York: Van Gogh Museum –
Amsterdam and Princeton Architectural Press, 2004.
Silverman, Kaja. The Threshold of the Visible World. New York: Routledge, 1996.
Sontag, Susan. On Photography. 1977. London: Penguin Books, 1979.
Download (PDF Format) Thesis by Pelin Aytemiz
Spectral Images: Dispossesed Family Photographs Circulating in the Antique Markets Turkey
