Every Picture Tells a Story

 

(Just as a preface: for those of you who are Rod Stewart fans, I did not borrow the title of this piece from his album of the same name. But since the shoe does fit, this entry is wearing it.)

daguerreotype - noun - a photograph taken by an early photographic process employing an iodine-sensitized slivered plate and mercury vapor (Google)

A photograph is always revealing, no matter what camera was used to take it or what process was involved in its inception. Today's word I gleaned from yesterday's reading of George Saunders's thought-provoking novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. During Lincoln's time, the daguerreotype was commonplace. Whenever I am browsing in a museum featuring photographic glimpses of the distant past, I am always quite taken by the similarities and not the differences between life in the mid-to-late 1800s and now. For one, the human faces–albeit rigidly discomfited and dressed up differently–bear an uncanny resemblance to those on the streets today. Sometimes they look so familiar that I feel as though I might have known or even know them. And naturally, each photo presents a narrative that begs the viewer to write for his/her own entertainment.

Last year, I traded in my ailing flip phone for an iPhone SX, which includes a remarkable camera capable of taking incredible photos and videos, the quality of which once belonged only to the talents of a professional. Sometimes when I am bored, I scroll through all of the portraits I took that hold time in their hands. All of the moments come back to me vividly so much so that I want to reach into each image and embrace whoever or whatever is featured in the frame and never let it go. But then I get a hold of myself and realize that the purpose of the photograph is just that: never to let go of the memory documented. 

In my favorite novel of all time, Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Nick reminds Jay that he can't repeat the past. Well, maybe you can't repeat the past in reality, but surely you can duplicate it on film so that you can re-experience the actuality in your imagination, which is probably why Jay surrounds himself with photographs of Daisy (if not in the novel, than in the Farrow/Redford film version). Wow! The photograph was, is and always will be one of human kind's greatest inventions since it allows us opportunities to recall actual stories of the past or invent unrealized ones in order to escape the present reality just for a bit. To enter a photograph is to live largely in our memories and imaginations, places we don't always have time to inhabit. 

Photographs allow us to "take a walk on the wild side" or not. It is our decision as to how far we want to wade in the past while ensconced in the present. 

#word of the day, #vocabulary, #writers, #writers and poets, #words, #inspiration, #optimism, #inspiring words, #humor, #spilled thoughts, #motivation, #inspirational thoughts, #inspiration, #inspirational words, #words of wisdom, #affirmation, #optimism, #poets and writers, #writers community, #writers, #readers #writing