By Cheryl Springer
I recently became reacquainted with a dear friend I had lost contact with several years ago after she migrated. I have not actually met her so far, but we have been catching up online. After several lengthy emails in which we detailed what we had been up to over the years, we agreed to exchange photographs of ourselves and our children. I have a daughter she’s never seen; she has teenage twin boys, who I had met as babies, and a ‘tween’ daughter born after we’d lost touch.
As I scrolled through ‘My Pictures’ folder on the computer, I marvelled at how easy it has become to do this: store, save and share memories using the available technology. Think of it, there must be trillions of photographs in cyberspace – posted on websites, blogs, emails – all made possible through digital technology. I found the pictures I wanted, but I also rediscovered countless others. Like one of my mother, probably taken before I was born, which my sister had restored and emailed to me. Apart from its obvious sentimental value, it stands as a reminder of how fashion repeats itself. The mini dress, wig and high heels would not look a bit out of place today. I also archived the several others that I had saved and meant to print but never got around to doing. I’m sure I will get around to it one day.
I’m sure far fewer people print photographs these days as opposed to say a decade ago, when colour prints still reigned supreme, and were a huge shift away from the black and white and sepia tones of yesteryear.
I personally don’t have any photos of myself as a very young child (water damage from a terrible fire that was too close for comfort, put paid to that). I know that one exists, my brother, who is also in it, guards it jealously. But I can recall that taking a photo was a big deal. We would book the photographer way in advance and we only took pictures on special occasions – weddings, first communion, confirmation and sometimes on birthdays. The other option was to get dressed and go to a photo studio. Some people had cameras, but they had to buy films and ‘flash’ – a cubed sort of glassy silvery object as I recall that was attached to some part of the camera for taking photos indoors.
Today, to many young people a camera is a slim silvery object a little bigger than a cigarette lighter, or better still it’s a telephone. And they are able to take still and moving (video) pictures with it. They probably shake their heads in wonder when they view films set in the days when the photographer had to put his head under a black cloth and the subjects were forced to stand there woodenly, their smiles frozen in place until after the ‘flash’ and then wait weeks before they collected their black and white prints.
But taking photographs involve more than sentimentality, they are also, in whatever format they are taken, an excellent way of preserving history. The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” could perhaps now be considered trite. But it will remain one of the greatest truths ever spoken. Pictures are worth millions when they are candid: the subject is unaware that s/he is being photographed. In fact, there are pictures for which there are no words. Some of the greatest photos of all time fall into this category: a pickpocket in action; the scene following the assassination of JFK; a suicide jumper in mid-fall.
The now extinct Life magazine – extinct in print that is as it is still available online – was famous for its photojournalism. It was touted as the first all-photography news magazine and though it had several followers none ever came as close in terms of popularity. In the days of Life, a photojournalist was a highly specialised individual and one whose pictures really did not need a written caption. Life, like many other newspapers/magazines that would have been popular in its heyday, probably folded for financial reasons brought on by the instant gratification provided by the internet.
Citizen journalism, now being embraced even by the formerly haughty CNN, where any literate person who could put together a sentence or hold a camera steady could be published must have some of the famous old heads turning in their graves. Nevertheless, the value to history of some of what is being recorded every time someone clicks a button should not be underestimated. Today’s digital imagery and the ability to store that in virtual space so to speak, also avoids loss by fire, flood, theft and moving.
Perhaps the only lesson that needs to be taught to the point and click generation, is that they should at least try to read the manual before operating the camera. It would minimise blurring, blackouts and portraits in which the head of the subject is cut off. This is advice I mean to take myself.
