What is Stellvertreterritual

This chapter considers the specific materiality of a defaced family photograph and the absence of narrative that it represents. The photograph is interrogated to open a dialogue and understand how the meaning of it has changed over time after the point it was made and not only the depicted moment that it shows. The photograph is discussed from the personal perspective of re-discovering the cut photographic print within the family archive and the shift in interpretation that it started. The chapter brings together this personal encounter with a defaced, undesirable photograph and other examples of theory and practice that deal with similar themes of intervention, photographic materiality, distributed memory, and absence that demonstrates the significance and value of photographs placed on a timeline over a singular moment. This is how photographs are part of a range of factors that support the construction of autobiographical memory.