Full Frame: Push-button memories

Full Frame features photo essays and conversations with photographers in the field.

The Push Button Memories Project starts out with one fundamental certitude: All over the world, and at certain places in particular, people are at this moment taking pictures of themselves and their surroundings.

I observed this ubiquitous human behavior during a trip to Hong Kong in 2004. I also noted the greater frequency and density with which the behavior manifested itself the closer I came to locations identified as “landmarks.” These two observations became the creative seeds from which the Push Button Memories Project has grown.

The Push Button Memories Project is intimate in its focus, and global in its vision. Through the simple act of taking a photograph, an essential aspect of our humanness is illuminated; an aspect that crosses the cultural, ethnic, national and other boundaries that appear to divide us. Push Button Memories is both sociological and anthropological in its scope, recording behavior that has been with us since people started off-loading images onto the walls of caves.

Memories provide us with an essential sense of self. Shared experiences connect us to our loved ones and to our society. Photographs have leveraged our ability to document these connections, giving us the power to create “push-button memories” and have revolutionized our sense of self and our place in the world.

Visitors to these landmarks are members of a global social structure that transcends traditional cultural, ethnic and national boundaries. There is a widely disseminated understanding of the meanings assigned to these locations. The visitors who come to a specific landmark are connected both in that shared understanding of the site’s attributes, and in their desire to be associated with the “real thing.”

Photographs serve to authenticate this experience, both objectively and subjectively. Each time we look at a photograph, it reinforces feelings of connection. Each time we look and respond, a new layer of meaning is added; the original image is, at once, enriched and changed.

The collection peers through the window of shared experience to document the universal act of creating push-button memories.

There are three recurring elements in my documenting from site to site. The use of the landmark as the main background, the wide field of view from the 20 mm lens and a similar hue and saturation even though these landmarks are photographed in a different atmosphere, geographical location and time of year.

I photograph the series with just one 35mm camera body and 20mm lens which allows for me to be non-intrusive to both the site and my subjects. I chose the 20mm lens with the deliberate intent not to be a voyeur at a distance with a long telephoto. Instead the 20mm lens’ wide focal length demands a greater intimacy with my subjects.

About the photographer:

After graduating the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Orin Rutchick began his career as an art director and photo editor for a monthly magazine. 

With two years of print art direction and photo editing experience, he then helped form a small advertising-design firm with three fellow creatives.



In 1998 after 24 years as a photographer, designer and art director in both advertising and publication design, Orin left his position as a creative director for a major retail design and advertising firm to devote himself to his lifelong passion for photography. He has been shooting editorial assignment and personal work ever since. 



Rutchick was awarded a McKnight Photographic Fellowship for his "Push Button Memories: Landmarks Worldwide." His fellowship work documented landmarks in the U.S., titled, "These United Memories; 50 States 50 Landmarks.

"

Orin Rutchick founded and established Minneapolis Photo Center. The center’s mission is to be an inclusive, member-based community dedicated to providing educational opportunities, comprehensive studio facilities and inviting social spaces for photographers of all ages and skill levels to meet, socialize, learn, grow, create and exhibit their work together.