I have always been fascinated and intrigued by photography, One of the first ‘big’ presents I got as a child was a simple camera. It was an Olympus Trip 35. This was in the days of using real film on a roll, taking it to the chemist and waiting a few days for the photos to develop. The sense of disappointment that the landscape image or unique portrait I had spent time capturing had not quite worked but was instead a blurry mess was my more usual memory.
As I grew older, I moved into the world of SLRs with lenses and tripod and all the paraphernalia. Taking a photograph became an act of carrying the equivalent of the kitchen sink with me and to the annoyance of many it took so so very long to set up and capture that perfect image! And in all honesty, I’m not that sure it was often achieved! I still possess some of this equipment, but it sits in the bottom of a cupboard unused and gathering dust.
The main reason for such neglect is the rapid development and improvement of my iPhone which produces photos of amazing quality and provides options which are instant and accessible. Equally important is the ability to take so many and delete even more!
I am thinking a lot of photography at the moment because on Monday coming, (the 19th August), we will be observing World Photography Day which is a globally recognised celebration of the photograph and its history.
Apart from taking countless pictures I have always been fascinated by the way in which photographs were and are able to bring me into another world. Photographs have an astonishing power and ability to root us in memory.
I have attended loads of photography exhibitions from the masters like Henri Cartier Bresson who brought 1930s Paris and the faces of its streets alive, or the Glasgow giants like Oscar Marzaroli whose images of Glasgow children in backcourts depicted the grim reality of poverty in the 1950s and 60s so sharply, or my favourite from last year the American Great Depression chronicler Dorothea Lange whose stark imagery painted the true picture of dustbowl poverty and racial discrimination in the pre-World War Two US. There is a lot to learn by looking through the lens of a great photographer.
Growing up I poured over the few family photographs we had and benefited as the year passed and as we inherited more family black and white snaps, from my mother putting names to faces, stories to images, and memory to the captured moment. Photographs were the door to the history of a time and people I belonged to but could not be present amongst.
When I have sat with those I have known who lived with dementia or have been in care homes I have witnessed just how valuable a tool photographs and photography are in supporting people who live with dementia. Even when her dementia was really bad my mother seemed to come alive when she took off her glasses, looked at a photograph, and the sparkle of a happy moment or even a sad reflection brought her to the point of telling the story it held.
Photographs can help in so many ways. They can trigger memory, giving a feel and recall of the moment and help someone preserve that critical sense of identity which dementia often strips away. They can help someone find the words and language which allows them to say what they are feeling at that moment, and they can also act as a means to calm and soothe someone by rooting them into recollection. That is why I can attest to the powerful value of gathering photographs into a memory book for someone who might frequently forget things. As they look through the book memory is stirred, calmness soothes, and reflection is the quieter of hurt.
A picture does indeed tell a thousand stories. It can give us the words we have lost to speak of the moment which is ours. It can help us to spark a conversation and to express what might be too hurtful or hard to say directly.
I used to use photographs in supporting those who found words challenging and difficult because of age or disability, and to do so often around hard and emotional issues such as death, dying, grief and bereavement. A shared photograph, especially one with association and personal memory, allowed us to get alongside one another, to tell our tale of hurt or healing, by looking at and through the image in our hands rather than having to hold the gaze of the memory through direct eye contact. The photo became our distracted focus for feelings.
There are lots of families who come together very often at points of loss and grief and who in looking though albums and photographs heal one another’s hurt in that mixture of tears of happiness and emptiness.
I do sometimes wonder if in this instant photographic digital age that we are in danger of losing the tactile and tangible giftedness of the physical photograph; of losing the sharing of the image and the conjuring of delight, shock and admiration.
In an age where we have more cameras than we have ever had. In an era where there are more photographs taken than there ever have been, is there a danger that we have lost the art of using photographs as a solace and sharing of memory?
I read recently that 99% of photographs we take are never shared and never printed out. Now I am all for sustainability, but I fear we are losing something about the sustainability of tangible memory, the touch of recollection, the real power of the photograph to connect us to ourselves and to others.
Maybe that is why there has been such a growth recently in scrap-booking, and in apps which make it easier for us to print out and hold onto our photographs. Indeed, almost as a reaction to the digitisation of memory it is estimated by one commentator that the photo printing market is going to grow by over 10% in the next 5 years.
This World Photography Day I’ll take my phone and take a few pictures, but I will also go and print some, so that I and others can sit and share, reflect and remember, the moment which was captured and which tells a thousand words worth.
But of course everything including our photographs are in the eye of the beholder as the poet Drora Matlofsky reminds us:
My Father’s Father
Mum gave me a picture
of my father’s father.
(Her Alzheimer-clouded mind
doesn’t like photos,
because she seldom recognises
the faces looking up at her.)
‘I don’t know what to do with it,’
she says.
A forty-year old man
dressed as in the thirties
sitting on a low wall
looks far away
at something I cannot see
and smiles.
He died before I was born.
I know little of him.
I put the picture away
with other family photos.
Papa’s French father now sits alone
among Mum’s English relatives
he never met
and whose language he didn’t speak.
How ironic they should end up
in the same box.
My Father’s Father poem – Drora Matlofsky (best-poems.net)
Donald Macaskill.
Photo by Alexander Wang on Unsplash
