The true value of a photograph
Almost four years ago, a fellow photographer asked me to write about the importance of having photographs printed. I spent a ridiculous amount of time procrastinating – other people could write better messages – I was still in pain years after my parents dying….and yet the importance of family photography is almost something sacred to me.
We all too often remember out parents as grandparents. Very rarely will we be over-saturated with images of them as young vital people. We almost never see an embrace, a mid-joke moment, or the tenderness of them – the kindness of them. Time has placed constraints on what was photographed vs what was remembered and felt.
My favorite photograph of my beloved Grandfather Sydney and my good self aged three – in our matching striped pyjamas, tartan dressing gowns and matching brilliantined white hair does not exist except in my head. When I die, that image will disappear forever. Sydney will disappear forever.
It was not taken. The photograph was not taken. Amongst so many other photographs that were made – this was not. All ‘we’ have is the ‘neurochrome’. And yet it’s imaginary loss aches. And yet, every day we as professionals are asked for the most ephemeral medium, the most transient, the most affected by technology, and the most invisible form of image storage ever invented by man. The digital file.
Every day, more people lose their history as a hard drive crashes, as a laptop gets stolen. Every day, less portraits of loved ones appear in frames on the mantle or table as a constant, tangible reminder that people we love exist, used to exist - but remain in our eyes and minds.
Every morning I walk past this photograph. As a mature man, I understand my father as man – loving this woman, gasping at her beauty and wanting her. It is special to me because it is a portrait of my mother – done in Hollywood style – sixth months pregnant with me. My father believed with considerable evidence that women had a particular beauty at that time.
His love, his wife most certainly did.
We all too often remember out parents as grandparents. Very rarely will we be over-saturated with images of them as young vital people. We almost never see an embrace, a mid-joke moment, or the tenderness of them – the kindness of them. Time has placed constraints on what was photographed vs what was remembered and felt.
My favorite photograph of my beloved Grandfather Sydney and my good self aged three – in our matching striped pyjamas, tartan dressing gowns and matching brilliantined white hair does not exist except in my head. When I die, that image will disappear forever. Sydney will disappear forever.
It was not taken. The photograph was not taken. Amongst so many other photographs that were made – this was not. All ‘we’ have is the ‘neurochrome’. And yet it’s imaginary loss aches. And yet, every day we as professionals are asked for the most ephemeral medium, the most transient, the most affected by technology, and the most invisible form of image storage ever invented by man. The digital file.
Every day, more people lose their history as a hard drive crashes, as a laptop gets stolen. Every day, less portraits of loved ones appear in frames on the mantle or table as a constant, tangible reminder that people we love exist, used to exist - but remain in our eyes and minds.
Every morning I walk past this photograph. As a mature man, I understand my father as man – loving this woman, gasping at her beauty and wanting her. It is special to me because it is a portrait of my mother – done in Hollywood style – sixth months pregnant with me. My father believed with considerable evidence that women had a particular beauty at that time.
His love, his wife most certainly did.
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Amanda, before the disturbance caused by my arrival – early 1956
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My sister was first. I had no say in the matter – turning up as I did three years later. It always interests me how you can hold a photograph in your hands, and tell pretty much where it was taken. This image of my sister Mandy is a no-brainer – Australia. Victoria. Melbourne. North Balwyn. My mother’s hand give scale to how old Mandy was. The dresses of all of the frames occupants tells us the period. The last image of my mother leaning on the token gate says much. Behind is the house Mandy and I grew up in. My parents left it long after we did. Its structure didn’t change, but the garden did. In these days of everyone’s gardens being looked after, ours was created out of the clay and building detritus of a new estate in the 1950’s. Men had sheds and made things. Women made babies, homes and families.
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How can I tell you what I see in these few images? How can I tell you what I feel? …My parents are dead. My Dad died at the age of 96, my Mum succumbed to Alzheimer’s nearer to 76. Of all the catastrophes you wish on your enemies, you never wish Alzheimer’s or Dementia on their loved ones.
My mother struggled with the loss of thought, and the increasing strangeness of deeds and actions for almost seven years. My father did what he could and in the nature of his generation somehow sought to cover it up or hope against all hope it would go away, and the girl he married would be back again.
But she never did return. On visits he made to the home where she was tenderly looked after by the true saints of this earth, she believed he was her father come to take her home – even though she couldn’t bear to be away from her new family inside the locked ward.
This was a woman who made her own clothes with the perfection of a couture, who every day coaxed her hear into a French roll pinned to perfection. Who always had intellect, wit, humour, warmth and care enough for many.
My last view of my mother was one I never wanted to remember. It was of a disheveled, disorientated, mute and distressed person that somehow (through all that) new me….somehow.
And I swore to myself, that the last vision was not the one I could live with, nor was it what she deserved after existing in the world with grace, integrity and genuine warmth. But where was she?
That’s when I understood the true value of the family photograph collection. The formals, the snaps – all of it. She existed. My father existed. My Grandfather existed and my sister – thankfully – graces a family of her own making.
This history was immediately accessible. It was printed. Think long and hard about this:
I can hold my parents in my hand. I have a physical connection to them. They touched and treasured these photographs. I went looking for ‘her’ in the family photo collection. The shoe boxes filled with neatly stacked photographs that my father had organized. Square ones with little date stamps from the 1960’s where my sister and I appear in front of a shiny new car on a blindingly bright summers day. Cardboard mounted slides that glimmer with colour like tiny religious icons containing views of landscapes I’ve long forgotten. But there were other boxes. Old photographic paper boxes that contained larger photographs, thick and slightly smelling of old pennies and vinegar. Prints my father had made in the laundry converted to a darkroom. A beautiful young woman in the woods. In an opera cape on a chaise lounge. Beside a car in the mountains. She looked like a cross between Grace Kelly and Lauren Bacall. It was my mother.
My mother struggled with the loss of thought, and the increasing strangeness of deeds and actions for almost seven years. My father did what he could and in the nature of his generation somehow sought to cover it up or hope against all hope it would go away, and the girl he married would be back again.
But she never did return. On visits he made to the home where she was tenderly looked after by the true saints of this earth, she believed he was her father come to take her home – even though she couldn’t bear to be away from her new family inside the locked ward.
This was a woman who made her own clothes with the perfection of a couture, who every day coaxed her hear into a French roll pinned to perfection. Who always had intellect, wit, humour, warmth and care enough for many.
My last view of my mother was one I never wanted to remember. It was of a disheveled, disorientated, mute and distressed person that somehow (through all that) new me….somehow.
And I swore to myself, that the last vision was not the one I could live with, nor was it what she deserved after existing in the world with grace, integrity and genuine warmth. But where was she?
That’s when I understood the true value of the family photograph collection. The formals, the snaps – all of it. She existed. My father existed. My Grandfather existed and my sister – thankfully – graces a family of her own making.
This history was immediately accessible. It was printed. Think long and hard about this:
I can hold my parents in my hand. I have a physical connection to them. They touched and treasured these photographs. I went looking for ‘her’ in the family photo collection. The shoe boxes filled with neatly stacked photographs that my father had organized. Square ones with little date stamps from the 1960’s where my sister and I appear in front of a shiny new car on a blindingly bright summers day. Cardboard mounted slides that glimmer with colour like tiny religious icons containing views of landscapes I’ve long forgotten. But there were other boxes. Old photographic paper boxes that contained larger photographs, thick and slightly smelling of old pennies and vinegar. Prints my father had made in the laundry converted to a darkroom. A beautiful young woman in the woods. In an opera cape on a chaise lounge. Beside a car in the mountains. She looked like a cross between Grace Kelly and Lauren Bacall. It was my mother.
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In amongst these aromatic treasures were beautiful studies of my sister and I. In prams, sitting on chairs (ahhh yes!.....the Adirondack chairs my father made – a full scale for him, a half scale for me. And there I am….hamming it up for his cumbersome and enormous old camera – I’m neatly groomed and I have a half-eaten cookie clutched in one hand. I’m smiling because my normally serious but gentle father is being silly to try and make me laugh.
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But I come to a small, square, colour glossy Kodak print with its little date stamp on the edge. It’s of my Mother. She is seated in the half-scale chair. Elegant as always. There is tea in a cup and saucer in her lap. I am stood close to her. My ‘Red Ryder’ cap pistol is empty. She is leaning in very close. And then I remember the conversation like it was yesterday.
‘Mummy, I need some caps for my gun’ She replies ‘Darling, we can’t afford caps’ I plead with her ‘Yes you can Mummy – you’re rich’ As the shutter in the camera clicks, she says ‘No Dear, you know what happens when you fire it off behind Daddy’ |
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I also remember my mother much later in life telling me that mothers sniff their babies. They take in their scent. And they never stop doing it. As a professional photographer, I have had secret joy in watching this be true in the quiet moments between mothers and their kids.
The last time I saw her alive, she shuffled towards me and embraced me. It was like holding a fragile bird. And I heard her sniffing me…taking in my scent. Even though should couldn’t remember who I was, somewhere in the shattered remnants of her – she knew me. A mother’s instinct.
Every single damned time I address large groups of people about this subject, more than a few people tell me of their loss of their own parents. A greater number share the experience of loss of their digital files with me.
One photographer friend shared with me a story that will stay with me always. A friend of his was struggling with his beloved wife’s early onset of Alzheimer’s. He made a portrait of them before she had completely succumbed, and provided them with an 8x10 print for her in her care center. She does not let go. It is regularly worn down to a two-inch circle from the constant handling, and gets replaced. It cannot be framed, but must be in her hands.
Observing my mother’s decline, I can only describe it as slowly drowning. I fully understand the need for tactile connection. I understand its importance to us. I don’t think we can ever hold onto a disc, or a usb drive and feel the same connection – or fill the same void.
Today, we are too busy. We actually worship the cult of ‘Busy’. We cannot take time to simply experience. We have to make a quick snap with our phones and file it away in ‘invisible land’ for some future retrieval which in our heart of hearts we know we won’t do.
Because the moment has gone with us disconnected from it by a transient device. How many people do we see now at a concert recording the concert….to enjoy when?
We think the screen image is enough, but all we hold is the phone. The phone holds many things, and time is too short – even though we never appreciate how short.
One day we are shocked into understanding.
For so many of us, the printed photograph is there for us to appreciate differently, tactily, with reverence. For us with only files – we flip through with the same distance and disconnect as viewing the Netflix menu.
All of us have photographs. But not all of us have prints.
We make every excuse as to why we can’t be photographed – too fat, not dressed right – ‘hate having my picture taken’ without realizing that (except for the vacuous ‘selfie’) people ask for our photograph because they LOVE us and don’t want to forget us.
Part of your job on earth is to leave a mark. To leave a history. Printed photographs do that. People long deceased are still viewed by us with reverence, respect and love.
In the last year, more photographs were made than in the entire history of photography. Sadly, fewer photographs were printed than in the entire history of photography. ‘We only appreciate the true value of a photograph when it’s all we have left’
We are allowing ourselves and those we love to be erased. One day, those that loved you will need those photographs like they need air.
Don’t disappear.
The last time I saw her alive, she shuffled towards me and embraced me. It was like holding a fragile bird. And I heard her sniffing me…taking in my scent. Even though should couldn’t remember who I was, somewhere in the shattered remnants of her – she knew me. A mother’s instinct.
Every single damned time I address large groups of people about this subject, more than a few people tell me of their loss of their own parents. A greater number share the experience of loss of their digital files with me.
One photographer friend shared with me a story that will stay with me always. A friend of his was struggling with his beloved wife’s early onset of Alzheimer’s. He made a portrait of them before she had completely succumbed, and provided them with an 8x10 print for her in her care center. She does not let go. It is regularly worn down to a two-inch circle from the constant handling, and gets replaced. It cannot be framed, but must be in her hands.
Observing my mother’s decline, I can only describe it as slowly drowning. I fully understand the need for tactile connection. I understand its importance to us. I don’t think we can ever hold onto a disc, or a usb drive and feel the same connection – or fill the same void.
Today, we are too busy. We actually worship the cult of ‘Busy’. We cannot take time to simply experience. We have to make a quick snap with our phones and file it away in ‘invisible land’ for some future retrieval which in our heart of hearts we know we won’t do.
Because the moment has gone with us disconnected from it by a transient device. How many people do we see now at a concert recording the concert….to enjoy when?
We think the screen image is enough, but all we hold is the phone. The phone holds many things, and time is too short – even though we never appreciate how short.
One day we are shocked into understanding.
For so many of us, the printed photograph is there for us to appreciate differently, tactily, with reverence. For us with only files – we flip through with the same distance and disconnect as viewing the Netflix menu.
All of us have photographs. But not all of us have prints.
We make every excuse as to why we can’t be photographed – too fat, not dressed right – ‘hate having my picture taken’ without realizing that (except for the vacuous ‘selfie’) people ask for our photograph because they LOVE us and don’t want to forget us.
Part of your job on earth is to leave a mark. To leave a history. Printed photographs do that. People long deceased are still viewed by us with reverence, respect and love.
In the last year, more photographs were made than in the entire history of photography. Sadly, fewer photographs were printed than in the entire history of photography. ‘We only appreciate the true value of a photograph when it’s all we have left’
We are allowing ourselves and those we love to be erased. One day, those that loved you will need those photographs like they need air.
Don’t disappear.