I have loved photography for as long as I can recall. I’ve had a camera in hand since elementary school. I remember my first one; it was a Kodak Pocket Instamatic I got for either Christmas or my birthday. Dad was also an aficionado of amateur photography; only later in life have I learned that he too inherited it from his father and grandfather.
Anyway… my Instamatic traveled with me to the zoo, to Washington D.C., to Disney World; I captured wild animals, classmates on our Trailways bus trips (arguably wild animals ourselves), and everyday moments with my little group of friends, or my pets. I arranged my Madame Alexander dolls having a tea party, and my Barbies living it up in the Dream Camper, and I took lots of pictures.
Basically, I took hundreds of photos.
In the 70s, film processing for amateur photographers was a protracted exercise in patience. Back then, there certainly was no such thing as one-hour processing at a local pharmacy, much less a home printer. No, I would badger my parents until someone took me to drop off my little Kodachrome 110 film cartridges at the local Fotomat kiosk or at Thompson Photo. And then I'd wait. And wait. And wait.
(Side note: “Honest Ed” Thompson was a friend of my dad’s and it wasn’t until high school that it occurred to me having Honest Ed develop my party pictures was both risky and short-sighted. But I digress).
Once I learned that it was an option, I started getting double prints of every roll I developed. After all, there were some real gems in there and surely people would want their own copies especially if they were the subject matter. Triple prints were an option too! Today I have shoeboxes filled with multiple copies of grainy, weak contrast pictures of my family, my pets, zoo animals, bedroom posters, friends, the Smokies – why, I even have a few copies of my first selfie! I think everyone in my generation has one of these shots… a giant flash in the mirror and a kid’s body underneath it holding the camera.
I’ve wondered why we say we are “taking” a photo. The verb implies that we are acquiring something – and as is the case with all things acquired, there is some degree of value attached thereto.
Arguably, in this case the value is in limited to the eye of the amateur photographer unless you win some photo contest or you get an exceptionally great and likely rare photo that’s appreciated by other friends or family members. The pros have other incentives – while the technical composition and subject matter of their photographs are certainly important, the quality of their work correlates directly to their livelihood. In other words, they have a whole other kind of skin in the game.
But at least in my case (and I suspect I’m not alone here), the taking of photographs for nearly 50 years gave me validation, documentation. After all, if it looks good, then it is good… right?
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I’m not talking so much about my own personal appearance (although if I’m honest, there have been many photos of me that I hope no one ever saw besides Honest Ed and me).
I’m talking about life. What did – does – my life look like? Was it as f*cked up as I remember or did it look fairly normal? Was my mother crazy or not? Did my friends truly like me or was I just tolerated in exchange for the free Double Bubble I bought on the way to school EVERY. DAY…
Wikipedia calls the camera an “image-forming device”, and a photographic plate, photographic film or a silicon electronic image sensor is the “capture medium”. An image-forming device. How about that - image-forming. Since memory and imagination often inconsistent with factual reality, cameras made it possible to get just the facts, ma’am.
Yet it seems both naïve and unlikely that chemical emulsification of an image onto a special type of paper can ever provide an accurate depiction of what life was and is like. We want our photos to be the best they can be – because if it looks good, it is good.
…. Right…?
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Thanks to American scientist Edwin Land’s daughter Jennifer, Land built and unveiled the first commercial instant camera in 1948. Jennifer had repeatedly pestered her father about how tiresome it was to have to wait for film processing; she’s quoted as saying, “But Father, why can’t I see them now?” Dr. Land henceforth began assembling the solution to her complaint, no doubt to shut down the whining.
The proliferation of instant-gratification Polaroid cameras in the mid-70s whetted my appetite for documenting a normal life, but the film itself was cost prohibitive for a pre-teen. This was a season of unprecedented f*cked-up-ness in our no-longer nuclear family, so capturing evidence of "normal" was more important than ever. Mom had a Polaroid SX-70 that I hijacked and then annoyingly begged for film packs over and over.
Such a thrill to seize a moment, push a button, hear the whirrrrrrr of machinery in my hand… and the immediate output of an initially unformed image on a square piece of film which included all the necessary components for development. The photo took a few minutes to process and I perhaps mistakenly believed that if I shook the film really hard, the picture would develop more quickly.
Today, these photos are still among my collection, but time is no friend to Polaroid instant photos. The images contained therein are cracked and faded; no amount of Facetuning can sharpen features or provide a clearer image. Maybe there are programs that would do a better job but I am too lazy to go look for them, at least at this point.
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I love my photo collection. With the arrival of social media and digital photography, I've had the opportunity to share some of these treasures with a vast array of friends and family literally around the world. I honestly don't care if they're "good" pictures or not; they are like little boxes of memories that we can pass around and enjoy together.
(But God help you if you post a bad picture of me. Just sayin.)
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