Maybe, like me, you took photos during the holidays or, maybe, you were the target of someone else's camera eye! Photos and cameras seem to be everywhere these days. A casual photography enthusiast last century may have ordered double copies of prints from Kodak but now, with digital photography, we take hundreds of shots because everything is deletable and manipulable. Subsequently, photography is rapidly changing and assuming a larger role in our lives. But what do photographs mean to us? Has the ease and intimacy of photography created a recorded personal history that's foundational to our identity? Have you ever wondered? As a caregiver and photography hobbyist questions like these are part of my life.
Think about a couple of young lovers, for example, taking a cell phone pic of their embrace. We know that the photo represents their moment of joy together--the photo has built in emotional responses. When either partner accesses the picture they remember that moment and their love. But, as we age, memories blur or take on different meanings. Photos from youth then represent a moment we can't recreate and their existence stands in for an identity or reality that has changed with time.
Maybe that's one reason we hang onto our pictures. Maybe we're attempting to understand our life as it changes over time or hold onto the meanings life had in moments gone by. We collect photos that record our: birth, childhood, graduations, marriages and so forth. We gaze at photos taken by others because they capture a perspective of us that may be intriguing or new. Photos of early childhood, for instance, capture our image before we even have complete awareness --long before we become who we are today!
Though we rarely look at our collection, we hold on to it preserving it in special places. That was the case with an 84 year old friend of mine who recently shared his collection of childhood photos and lifetime memories with me. After his wife died last year, he initiated the difficult process of downsizing. Childless and without close relatives, everything was his now to keep or throw out and many of the photographs [boxes of them] had to go, he said. Handing me a photo of himself looking coyly into the camera eye at 6 dressed in vest, spats, and a cowboy hat he remarked, "I feel like I'm throwing away half my life."
Photos have something to do with our identity yet the pictures we save aren't usually photos of us in professions or occupations where we devote so much time and energy. Why don't we preserve that identity in pictures I've wondered. Why do we save photos of: family and friends, vacations and avocations, pets etc. Is it because they tell the personal story about our life and, as a collection, say something about who we really are?
If we look closely enough at our photos what could we understand? That's what I've wondered since helping a friend scan his collection of prints--all of them---onto CD's to preserve and share. He was in his fifties when he had the random misfortune of contracting incurable illness prompting the project. Some of the digitized photos became facebook profile pics or posts while he was still living. All were sent to family. Many were part of the powerpoint slide show projected at his memorial. I asked him once if he would like to create a memoir or a narrative about his life before he died. He looked blankly at the scanner then at me and I realized the photos were the memoir. They said all he had to say about life and living.
Photos preserve the memory of people who are no longer with us and people we no longer are. They anchor our memory but can also confront us with a past we no longer recognize. For instance, photos are an essential tool for people with memory loss. They aid recall and identification and help in preserving social interaction as this blog illustrates. If identity starts to slip away, photo albums can help others understand who we were and symbolize preservation of self or the ordering of one's life. However, as I learned in interaction with advancing dementia, there are times when opening the photographic record can trigger anxiety and confoundment. Where was that photo taken? I don't remember being there! Who are those people? Oh, what are their names! When photos fail to prompt memory they present potentially disturbing challenges and may instead prompt troubled emotions.
Photographs tell the story of who we've been and where we've been. They record the world around us and may provide clues to the world within. They record a reality that's already past and an identity that's changed through time. As we look at images of ourself or others, we feel the response of memory and/or emotion "Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph," Simon and Garfunkel sung in 1968 and today, though photography is changing, pictures still offer proof that we were once children, once happy to be alive or once someone we no longer remember. Are they a foundation for our identity? I think so. What do you think?
