Invisible Knowledge Eszter Biro: The Storytelling Power of Photographs workshop

Photographs are seductive and powerful objects. Since photography’s invention, we haven't been able to live without them, instead producing more and more in various carrier mediums. Photography’s power is mostly recognised by its connection to the past, as it provides us with a two-dimensional visual representation of a moment in the past. Since the digital age and social media it also has a short life in the present, with real-time sharing. This is a very public use of photography. There is however a more personal intimate sharing of photographs, especially family photos and fine art photography, which, when it occurs, has a more permanent presence; even before that it lingers there as an invisible silent layer. In her research Eszter Biro brings these to surface with the help of storytellers who makes sense of their family images, and make it relevant in their current present. She calls this process confabulation. It is a collaborative journey she takes with participants, which takes time, courage and trust.

In this workshop Ester will show her personal journey – starting with her grandmother’s Vera’s bicycle ID – how she found confabulation and what she learnt by working with family photographs in relation to confabulation. She will show some examples from some of the collected confabulated stories to demonstrate its exciting power, and effect on cultural memory and history; and personal reflection and reconciliation. In the second part of the workshop, participants are invited to undertake a similar process of storytelling and confabulation around family photographs.