I've written recently about my granddaughter's graduation. It was the most extraordinary event. My husband and I had waited for that day. We couldn't attend, but we did watch a live stream of the graduation on his desktop, and together we caught glimpses of her walking into the graduation hall. We leaned in as her place in the alphabet drew close. Her name begins with 'S'. That's when it happened.
I was so intent on immortalizing the moment by capturing it with my camera that I didn't truly appreciate her presence. I missed that instant! The camera caught it. My son videotaped her accepting the diploma, so I could watch it (and have!) over and over again. But that moment, that lived moment, I did not fully experience.
My photo was supposed to immortalize the act of having the diploma bestowed, to have the memory, forever. Or at least for as long as I lived. But do I have the memory, or do I have a simulation of the memory?
Years ago I would never have done such a thing, I would never have rushed to take a picture of something so that I could hold onto it. My husband and I did not take a camera on our honeymoon (no cell phones back then). We do not have one photo of our wedding. My only guests were my mother, my mother-in-law, and my sister...although my sister came uninvited. Nobody at my wedding thought to bring a camera. No photo, and yet I see the moment as though it was today.
I think about the act of taking pictures. We snap them in order to hold onto a memory. That's what we say to ourselves, anyway. But in taking the picture are we changing the moment?
"This will make a good shot."
That's what we think when we pose, or when we photograph someone else who has posed. But in the act of posing and recording the moment, aren't we changing it? Aren't we creating an artifact?
Does a photograph freeze time, or does it objectify our experience? Look at the wedding picture below, taken in maybe 1930 or '35. I'm fairly certain nobody in that picture is alive today. I recognize only one person...my mother, who it seems was the maid of honor.
What does that picture immortalize? Surely not the bride or groom's love. Their faces are wooden, as are the faces of their attendants. Heavens, the children look grim.
I'm sure their wedding feast was joyous. They were Italian, and Italians know how to have a good time. But that's not what is in the picture. It was not a memory that was captured, but a photographer's impression of what a memory might be.
I think our obsession with pictures is all about a desire to stop time. It's a tacit acknowledgement that life is terminal. Every experience will evaporate. How do we stop that? How do we control it? Take a picture. Freeze the moment. It's ours forever.
But is it?
Here is another picture, posed and formal. My mother's family...my grandparents, aunts and uncles, taken in 1909 or 1910. I know my grandparents were devoted to their family, very proud of family. I'm sure they wanted to capture their lovely family in that particular moment in time. There's my mother, on the chair, barely able to stand.
I'm grateful this picture exists, but it is not a memory. It is a record, a piece of history, to be sure, a valuable piece of history. Is it 'real'? I don't know. The family had recently immigrated from Sicily (1906). My grandfather worked in a factory, sewing. He had been a tailor in Sicily but was reduced to factory work in the U.S. He was paid by the piece, so he would take sewing home so the children could help him earn more. My mother's family was proud (yes, the picture shows that), and they were poor. The picture doesn't show that. It is posed. It is a posture, an aspiration.
Does a photograph freeze time, or does it alter our experience?
Sometimes I look at a picture and I say, "Is that what I looked like? Is that the way it was?" As though the picture is more real than the way I lived the moment.
I take out pictures of my mother and my siblings from years ago. These pictures are reality checks. But are they? That's not the way I saw them at the time. It's not the way I remember them. What is more real for me--the camera image, or what I felt and saw? Can the camera take that away?
Experience is subjective. Ten people can witness an event and see ten different things. But the camera gives only one view, the definitive view. The camer's view shapes our memory of something that happened. The photo shapes our memory of the past.
I married in April of 1973, in Las Vegas, Nevada. I have clear memory of that day, of my husband, of running to City Hall and getting my marriage license at 11:00 am. I remember driving to the church. Vividly I recall this. And my husband in his blue suit, oh so handsome. The priest was jocular, and a bit rotund. He gave us remarkably earthy instructions to guide us in our marriage.
What would a picture tell me? Would it change my impression of the priest? Would it tell me we weren't the perfect couple, that it wasn't the perfect day? I remember a perfect day. I wouldn't want a picture to take that impression from me.
There was nobody at the wedding except the priest, our mothers, and my sister. No objective witnesses. No pretense or posing. That's what I remember.
I know Hive loves pictures. I never took photos before I started blogging here. I developed the habit since joining Hive of taking pictures because I think this photo or that photo might make a good post. So, instead of simply experiencing the waterfront, or the arboretum, I think of what a good shot I might capture. I begin to see not spontaneously, but from a staged perspective. It's not the same.
I've stopped taking those pictures. Sometimes I do, but often I don't. I just want to be there, to see, to hear, to feel.
I love pictures of my children and my siblings when they were young. These photos are treasures, but they are not memories. They show what other people saw. They show the history of a moment. They don't show what was actually happening. That is, they don't show what I was feeling, what my children were feeling. Those memories are impossible to simulate.
My family pictures are like stepping stones in history. They give me information. Sometimes, the ones that were taken spontaneously move my heart. But the picture is not the memory. Maybe memory does lie, but isn't that our prerogative? To hold onto pieces of our lives that are exquisitely personal, that have texture and dimension?
I don't want to see a picture that shows me that the roof I climbed as a child was really not that steep, or that the stream I crossed was really not that wide. Far more valuable for me is the memory of fear in climbing up the roof, or the delight in hopping across the slippery stones of swiftly moving water. Those are my memories and I'm very happy I don't have pictures to contradict my experience of those moments.
A note about the post: If you are thinking Schrodinger's cat, don't :) Schrodinger's cat is theoretical. Taking pictures, and looking at pictures, actually does change our perception (or at least my perception).
Thank you for reading my blog. Health and Peace to all.
Hive on!
