Photography’s Post-Mortem: Examining Emotion and Attachment Through Family Pictures

The phenomenology of photography is a rather understudied field, and images have been viewed almost exclusively as illustrative pieces with no independent capacity to speak about the past. They are viewed often as representational devices and their affects are neglected. In this paper I examine the phenomenology of photography as a method to uncover the affect of images through a family photograph. I delve into the depths of the Finnish World War II narrative and the associated emotions and objects that are passed on in family lines.