Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Tuesday in Texas

A Photographer’s Dilemma

by Kris B

If you read last week’s posts, you know that I was in Delaware working to clean out  my dad’s house, a house that had previously belonged to my grandparents on my mother’s side.  I am grateful that I have had help from a very kind friend of my dad’s who made a promise to my dad that he would help me with getting the house cleaned out and ready to be sold.  Trust me when I say, that is no small undertaking.  This man really is a candidate for sainthood!

My grandfather was quite the “collector.”  He save EVERYTHING!  I found newspaper clippings and some complete newspapers from every major news event of the 20th century.  And if the newspapers aren’t enough, the accompanying Life and Time magazines were also there.  These items were easy to deal with.  I am not a “saver” so the newspapers and magazines went in the auction pile because I know that there is someone out there who will be thrilled to have them.  It was also fairly easy for me to part with a good bit of family silver, crystal, and glass.  I don't have a place to keep much of it and, in all honestly, fancy is simply not my style.  I did save a few pieces for myself and a few for each of my girls.  Somehow I have yet to wrap my head around the whole idea of family heirlooms.  I suppose that once I am not functioning purely on adrenaline and caffeine, I may be able to look at the situation a little more rationally.  By then however, it may be too late.

I was surprised by the decisions that were the most difficult for me - what to do with photographs.  My grandparents had dozens of photo albums and scrapbooks from their sixty year life together.  I found albums filled with pictures of their travels as a young married couple, of my mother growing up, and of various family members and celebrations.  The problem was that in most cases there were no words with the photos.  Their story was known to my grandparents, and not to me.  Some of the photos did have dates and a rare few had names and locations, but this was the exception not the rule.  Without the accompanying stories, the photos were virtually meaningless to me.  That realization was both incredibly sad and, as a photographer,  enlightening at that same time.

Like with the silver and glass, I didn’t have any inclination, or any place, to save every single photograph.  I found myself going through the albums and pulling out those photos that I knew something about or that had some accompanying information.  The rest I left for other family members to go through.  The truth is that I suspect many of these pictures will end up in the trash.  I started to feel incredibly guilty about this until it hit me that these albums have been stored in the attic and the deep recesses of storage cabinets that have probably not once been emptied since the photo albums were put there in the 60’s. If the people for who whom the photos had meaning didn't look at them, why should I feel guilty about getting rid of them?  I know that may sound a bit harsh, but really, how many photos that have no meaning to me can I keep?

So what was the enlightening part?  I realized just how important it is for us to tell the stories of our photos with words as well.  For us as the photographer and for those who are present at the moment, words are not absolutely necessary; the photos will stimulate memories for us and the story will be there.  But what happens when we are gone?  You know that that photo you took of your child in the mismatched outfit was taken on the day she dressed herself for the very first time.  Will she remember that?  Will her grandchildren know that when they stumble across this photo in the decades to come?  Only if we take the time to tell the story now.

And another question, do all of the stories from our lives need to be preserved for future generations?  Obviously my grandparents passed along the photo album and scrapbook bug to my mom.  (By scrapbook here I mean saving things like programs and ticket stubs, newspaper clippings, and napkins, not the fancy scrapbooking of today that does encourage a journaling component.)  My mom created an album of my entire high school marching band “career.”  At that time, my life revolved around band; it is what I did day and night.  Marching band contests consumed nearly every weekend in the fall and they were a big deal.  Winning was important and losing was devastating.  The albums that my mom made have pictures from almost every contest in which I marched, mementos from each, and the resultant newspaper articles.  

This was my life thirty five years ago and obviously a lot of life has happened since then.  I still have vivid and fond memories of those days, but they are my memories and my kids don't have any interest in reading all of the newspaper clippings about where our band finished in the state marching band contest in 1979.  And why should they?  What they are interested in is seeing their mom as the only girl on the high school drum line. (I’m actually a clarinetist, but my private teacher didn't want me to ruin my “concert chops” by overblowing to compete with the brass on the field, so I played mallet percussion.)  The other interesting piece of this story is that it illustrates a time when marching band meant that you carried everything…there were no electric cords and instruments set up on the sidelines.  Even with that, it only takes a few pictures…and some words… to tell that story.

This overwhelming process of picking and choosing and deciding what to do with all of these old photos has made me really think about my own photo taking.  What in the world are my children, grandchildren, great grandchildren going to do with my photos from every single day?  Certainly not all of them deserve to live on through the generations, but none of them will unless I take the time right now to give them life, unless I document their story as I take them.  

So what about that saying, “A photo is worth a thousand words.”?  When I look at a photo for which I have no context, I create its story, like we do with any piece of visual art.  Such art is meant to stand on its own and is created with the intention that we will make meaning for ourselves.  I don’t think that we as “every day photographers” have this same goal.  We are memory makers and memory keepers.  There is no question that our pictures are important, but so are the words that go with them.  I now have no doubt about that.

I have been using the Collect app this year for organizing and storing my daily photos.  It’s a great app for keeping them all in one place.  And, it offers the capability of including quite a bit of journaling on the back of the digital daily “card.”  The downside to this system is that when you export the photos for printing, the backside doesn't go with them; only the photo side is exported and printed. Beneath the photo only a limit amount of journaling space exists.  Because of my revelations from the last week, I am considering giving a similar product, ShutterCal, a try.  It’s a subscription service.  The daily input of photos and journaling is similar to the Collect phone app, but with ShutterCal you are paying each month for your photos to be printed with the accompanying journaling on the back.  Granted, using ShutterCal is a little more expensive than the Collect app and sending your photos to be printed, but it is automatic…at the end of the month, your photos are printed and sent to you.  This is definitely something to consider.


Whatever your method of storing and preserving your photos, imagine members of your family stumbling across them in 50, 75, or 100 years.  What will they see?  What will they think?  What will they do with those pieces of your life?  I encourage you to invest in their future…tell your stories in both pictures and with words.

*****

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