"Weathering of time"

The relationship between the archive and memory is a complicated one. In Merewhether's article he mentions Shomei Tomatsu's warning againts the "weathering of time" or the erosion of memory. The photograph serves as a factual reminder of an earlier time allowing us to relive details of a past forgotten or diminished. I wonder how healthy this actually is, I think the weathering of memories is a defense mechanism of the human mind to allow us to proceed through life (as referred to in Hiroshima mon amour- "the necessity to accept the power to forget", pg132). Both in terms of good and bad memories. If we dwell on horrible moments of the past we cannot move forward, and if we dwell on the good times past, the future is always a let down. I know that documenting horrible injustices allows us to aways remember what has happened and not repeat the past, but even amongst these archives people still seem to want to forget. They question the validity of the archive to allow them to forget, we can only handle so much. Now with digital images, we can always question this archive so we are free to go on living in ignorant bliss. I find work dealing with blurring these lines of memory and archive intriguing.