In History as an Art of Memory, Patrick Hutton argues that history is an art of memory because it mediates the encounter between two moments of memory: repetition and recollection.

"Repetition concerns the presence of the past. It is the moment of memory through which we bear forward images of the past that continue to shape our present understanding in unreflective ways. One might call them habits of mind; they are the stuff of the collective memories that we associate with living traditions. Recollection concerns our present efforts to to evoke efforts of the past. It is the moment of memory with we which we consciously reconstruct images of the past in the selective way that suits the needs of our present situation. It is the opening between these two moments that makes historical thinking possible.

Historical thinking mimics the operations of memory in its consideration of these moments, though typically they are characterized as an exchange between received tradition and critical historical interpretation. What has changed in the history of Western historiography is the historians' understanding of the relationship between the two. Historiography in its ancient beginnings was heavily dependent on repetition. Historical understanding was literally immersed in collective memory, which continuously invoked the presence of the past. Since then, history has always in some measure been concerned with that presence, for it is mementos issuing from the living traditions of the past that inspire the historians' curiosity. Generally speaking, though, the trend of modern (and more emphatically postmodern) historiography has been away from reliance on the authority of received tradition. Modern historical understanding reflects the values of modern culture, which displays less reverence for the past, and invests greater hope in innovations for the future. Though we know more about the past than did our ancestors, the weight of its authority on us is not as heavy; and its appeal is more easily manipulated. In our own time, we have come to speak of the uses rather than the influences of the past, and its mementos are often little more than signatures employed to underscore our present concerns." (Hutton, p.xxi, 1993)

The relationship between repetition and recollection in family history shows how deeply intertwined these two functions of memory are. Photography is a case in point. Photographs are moments from the past repeated in the present but they only come back to life when we attach our recollection to them.