Time, authenticity and photographic storytelling in the Museum of Innocence

Although an individual may recollect an event, such remembering is influenced by the wider social environment to which the individual belongs. Heritage tourism research has focused on the active contestation of performances of collective memories through specific material affordances such as photographs and souvenirs. More recent work has also examined the kinds of pictures and objects that people carry with them and use to reassemble memories, practices and even landscapes, thus remaking the materiality of places. However, memories are also reconstructed through intangible practices of storytelling, and the telling of a story can confer added authenticity to a material place. This paper explores these conceptual ideas through an examination of the intertextuality of the novel by Nobel Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence which has subsequently been turned into a museum in Istanbul dedicated to the characters depicted in the book. Based upon visual ethnographic fieldwork at the museum we argue that the story of the Museum of Innocence as well as the actual museum help us to understand how conceptualisations of time are interwoven with how we experience and perform authenticity.