Meaning of family photographs

Just finished  'Family Snaps The Meanings of Domestic Photography' edited by Jo Spence & Patricia Holland ( Virago 1991)..an excellent background read for my personal project for Assignment 5. It introduced me to the concept of the use of phototherapy and the work of Judy Weiser at the Photo Therapy Centre in the United States.
See www.phototherapy-centre.com/home.htm

In the chapter called 'Soap, Family Album Work..and Hope', Jo Spence talks of how with the help of skilful listeners, photographs can be used as starting points to trigger off and reconstruct memories in a powerful way.

The approach that I am exploring for my final assignment is all about taking photographs in the here and now to evoke memories of a family past i.e. my Dad, who died thirty years ago and his history. This is more about constructing rather than reconstructing I think.

Following on from this, I was very interested then to listen to tutor Sharon Boothroyd's comments on and see Stephanie d'Hubert's work 'What Remains'  for the TAOP narrative project in the OCA Student E-bulletin recently(  http://goo.gl/PmLZ4B ). Stephanie took photos from her family archive and brought them together as dedication to her Mother who died in 1993 - all about absence and presence ... Similar but not quite the same approach that I want to take but inspiring for all that..