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Sylvia Martin
Griffith University

'The Desire to Belong: Photography, Memory, and Identity'

Elspeth Probyn speaks of the 'tenacious and fragile desire' that individuals have 'to belong', a fascination that disturbs any 'natural' belonging. In this paper, I will draw from a journey that I undertook recently as research for a book about two sisters who grew up as part of a fragmented family, living in different countries and speaking different languages. Now, as middle-aged women, they are trying to come to an understanding of what it might mean for them to be 'sisters'. One, who is my partner, says that 'the concept of family' was not one that she knew: 'I didn't belong to the group I was in.' Now that she has had 'an experience of family' as part of an unsanctioned family group with me, my children and my parents, she wishes to re/construct her own family history, in conjunction with the sister she has never lived with since babyhood and who resides on another continent: through photographs, memories and experiences of place. I will concentrate here on the photograph collections we encountered on our journey through the family diaspora of Australia, Spain, the Netherlands and Switzerland. What do these collections contain? What has been censored or lost? Who are the family archivists? I will discuss in detail a photograph of mother and daughters which has particular resonances. In Barthes' terms, it is a photograph containing a punctum, an 'element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me.'

Bio: Sylvia Martin holds a PhD in Women's Studies from Griffith University. She is an adjunct lecturer in English at University of New England and is also the current holder of the C.H. Currey Memorial Fellowhip at the State Library of New South Wales.

<sylviamartin@bigpond.com>