The first time I remember seeing a photograph by Ansel Adams it was in a calendar in a classroom. I was twelve, and the photo was a black and white picture of El Capitan in Yosemite. The photo was so striking, the light and dark so startling, that I remember the calendar all these years later. Every time I see an Ansel Adams photograph, I am again in the sixth grade, composing handwritten papers on Afghanistan or the apostle Peter.
I have always found photography so strange because it occupies so many corners of our lives. It is a powerful tool of communication, even of remembrance, that is at the disposal of nearly every person. And by every person, I mean especially my family, each and every member of which has the uncanny ability to snap my pic when I am retaining colossal amounts of either water, air, or pizza. If I don't look pregnant in a photo, I look drunk. With a gummy smile and half-closed eyes, I appear to have swilled my way through half a cooler of beer and to be weaving my way toward a bottle of whiskey. But the worst photos are those where I have been conveniently positioned in front of everyone else. There I am, Hildegard the giant milk maid with my family clinging to my broad shoulders like a collection of pet humans, peering tentively toward the camera, not daring to breathe lest I become wrathful (as giants do) and swallow them whole.
When on rare occasion, a picture manages to turn out well, I am the first to plaster it all over Facebook. I wonder if it is primarily women who complain over having their pictures taken. The light must be right, the shadow cast over your nose or teeth or chin must not make those features look unduly large or yellowed or doubled, respectively. Do men obsess over incidentals such as these? My dad doesn't seem to; I don't hear it so much from my brother. Why do I grasp desperately at the hope that every picture of me will be head-shot material? Years down the road, will I look at a picture of my 30-year-old self on a day out with my friends and moan about how my hair absorbs light? Or will I just remember the moment, the day itself?
The trouble is that, while I may protest the public display of myself as photographically recorded by friends or family on social network sites, I also don't want to feel left out, so I have to moderate my complaints. If I complain too much, no one will ever know that I socialize or have friends or even that I have friends and family who want to take pictures of me. If I complain too little, any old thing will pop up -- me looking like a more masculine version of my father, alongside my aggravatingly and perennially photogenic sister. Yes, it is a fine line I tread. Recently, several questionable pictures have cropped up. Between visits from friends and family, I find myself cringing when my e-mail alerts me to the fact that a "friend" has just tagged me in four new photos.
So why do we put ourselves through all of this (and by we I mean I)? I would have expected that by now human technology would allow us to have moving photos around our houses, hanging on our walls, like those in the Harry Potter films. Instead, we hold onto the motionless representations of ourselves, our ancestors, our friends. Some opt for the slide show frames, but even those have proven less popular than good old photos behind glass. Why? I believe that photography possesses the unsurpassable skill to take a moment and immortalize it. In pictures we find the fleeting expressions that might be missed in film or slide shows.
Photography has a very long history, beginning with camera obscuras that were used in the middle ages to project images onto walls and later to aid painters in the 17th century. The very first photograph was taken in 1827 by one Joseph Nicephore Niepce. It would still be many years before photography became established enough to produce images that would not disappear after being taken. In 1839, Louis Daguerre developed what is now recognized as modern photography with the birth of his daguerreotype (I have no idea how to pronounce any of these names). By 1850, seventy daguerreotype studios were under operation in New York City alone.
The flourishing of such studios allowed people to possess photographic mementos of their loved ones, and this became especially popular during the Civil War, which was also the first widely photographed conflict. Here Matthew Brady and his team devoted vast amounts of time to setting up their equipment to photograph soldiers fighting, at their tents, or even as part of the carnage in the battlefields. According to Eric Niiler, Civil War photography "allowed families to have a keepsake representation of their fathers or sons as they were away from home. Photography also enhanced the image of political figures like President Lincoln." Photography also presented the public with "Intense images of battlefield horrors ... for the first time." Photographs such as these were revolutionary. They impacted the history of war because every major war after has been photographed and recorded in a similar manner, showing viewers not just idealistic propoganda posters but the hard realities of war from Germany to Korea to Vietnam to the Middle East. Today we are still presented with photography, though through a vastly different method, which glimpses what happens so far away from home.
Of course, photography too can be used as propoganda. The Nazis issued many pictures intended to display Jewish weakness but which now mostly highlight Nazi savagery. Photographs, like any other medium, are interpreted differently by different viewers, the way one might read things into verbal statements or essays, but photographs also allow those viewing them to come to grips with human suffering, or even human experience, in a straightforward manner. The thing which separates the art of photography from any other form of art is its unique ability to capture images of real moments, real people. When I see pictures of the Nuba mountain people of Sudan, of the Jews in Aushwitcz, of Olympic athletes in London, I see a reflection of a person who has, or had, parents, friends, husbands, wives, children. I see people praying, as I do; I see children learning, as I did. I can take that moment and identify myself with the person in that picture even if we are separated by miles, oceans, experiences. Photography draws me to them in an inexpressibly human way.
These moments have much more to do with photojournalism than they do with snapping pics on family outings. Writing for Haartz, Alex Levac writes, "The professional and moral duty of documentary photography is to call attention not to people's human rights, but to their lack of rights. Photography, more than any other medium, has the power of raising consciousness in this basic respect." Photojournalism is a remarkable profession to me because it relies so much on timing. The best photos we see in newspapers or journals are surprising. They are often beautiful. They are always deeply effective. What I like about this particular aspect of photography, so long as it doesn't descend into tabloid territory, is its ability to occupy the space between family photo albums and jarring artistic photography. These are the photos that our society remembers collectively. These are our visual reminders of history. It is, in many ways, a branch of family photography.
My family, like many families, has boxes upon boxes of old pictures and portraits. I see in them my grandparents as children (my five-year-old grandfather with a dutch boy bob is a particular favorite). I see my great-grandparents and their siblings, even my great-great grandparents, many of whom were immigrants and lived on farms in the Dakotas or Minnesota. There are photos of old homesteads in the Yakima Valley, of old buildings before they were torn out or burned down, of my great-grandfather lounging on the roof of a cabin he built in the woods decades ago, a cabin my family is still able to call our own. These images are not necessities in my life. They do not alert society to human suffering. They do not contribute to the quality of existance in any significant way. Perhaps, but perhaps that isn't quite true either. When I hold these images in my hands, these yellowing pieces of heavy paper, I hold a moment. The moment this picture was taken, I can think, my grandma was a young woman, my mother a baby, my father a little boy who still believed in Santa Claus. They are significant because they allow us to glimpse the past we never witnessed and the past we can't remember and the present we need to understand, as societies but as families too.
On a recent canoe trip with my family to Cooper Lake, I gave explicit instructions to the family photographers that anytime I was about to be snapped, I was to be warned. It lead to a phrase which they would shout at me on the spur of a moment. Rather than the typical "Say cheese," they would cry out -- through the still summer air -- "Tuck in!" This ultimately lead to a series of pictures in which I have uncannily flat abs but also shoulders up to my ears and a tense smile which suggests I'm holding my breath, which I was. Of course, they're terrible of me, but there I am, on a pristine mountain lake, looking out toward Mt. Daniel and its glaciers, surrounded by people I love. And I discover, in a moment of clarity which doesn't involve me focusing on me, that these really are the most beautiful pictures of all.Sources I used:
A lovely photo from my mom, and:
Levac, Alex. http://www.haaretz.com/culture/books/photography-the-role-of-photojournalism-in-a-violent-world-1.353824.
Niiler, Eric. http://news.discovery.com/history/civil-war-photography-warfare-110411.html.
http://photo.net/learn/history/timeline.adp
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