PHOTOGRAPH

:a picture or likeness obtained by the art or process of producing images by the action of radiant energy and especially light on a sensitive surface

I took a bit of time alone today to go to the Frist Center and see a photography exhibit. While I appreciate photography as an art form, I'm not a big fan of the photograph in my everyday life. I have found time and again that seeing photos of an event after the fact ruins my memory of what I experienced. While at the Frist, I started pondering what a photograph tells us about the photographer. We assume we are learning something about the person framed by the lens, not the person framing it, yet the subject has a less active role than the photographer. Is this why I don't like photographs? Because I am rarely the photographer?

I'm rarely behind the camera because leaving the moment and stepping out of it in order to capture the moment is counterintuitive and not how I want to live. So instead of seeing the moment the way I lived and experienced it, with photos, I have to live someone else's experience. This would be fine - or perhaps less damaging to my memories - were the visual record not so powerful as to recast my own memory. It is hard to hold my own lived experience in the frame of my mind when someone else's catalogued image is seen in a photo. When that happens, their experience, in effect, erases my own.

When talking about photographs a few months ago with J, he suggested that since photos ruin my memory of an event, my approach should be to allow others to photograph me when requested, but that I not look at the resultant image(s) so as to not change my experience.

The two photos that have cemented an experience rather than erased it were taken by me. Seeing these two images always takes me back to the moment. I can hear what was being said and remember the sweetness of the original experience. Maybe I like these photos because they were my memories to begin with, not someone else's.