Architectures of Memory

What does it mean to feel at home? And how would this be photographed? These questions inspired this creative project, Architectures of Memory, which is comprised of a photographic series, Living Rooms (2013), and an accompanying essay, Landscapes of My Remembering. Living Rooms was made in the community where the author was born, called Retreat in Cape Town, South Africa. The 17 color photographs depict interior home spaces of iconic “council houses” which are identical detached, double, or often, triple storied structures built by the British and Afrikaner regimes for people of color. Landscapes of My Remembering is a 3,553-word essay that reflects on an event which inspired the photographic series. It includes an analysis of the photography book, Innenwelt- Inner World, Photographs of Romania and Exile (2007) by Beatrice Minda. Minda’s collection of 70 color photographs of rooms were made inside homes belonging to Romanians and Romanian exiles, emigrants, and itinerant workers in both Romania, and in Germany and France. The paper concludes with a list of the works cited and with portraits of the participants whose homes were photographed in Retreat.