THE FAMILY PHOTO
Sometimes, in egocentric moments I wonder how my kin might have looked. The currents of world events and the eddies of life carried us apart even before we could meet.
Somewhere, once, there was a photograph, a family portrait nineteenth century style, stiff backed and stern, with a matriarch sitting by her husband, son and daughter-in-law, and with four young people placed properly to the side and in front of the adults...a boy and three girls, smooth faced and with eyes looking directly into the lens of the camera. The camera seizes photons and captures a moment, archives for a time a shard of memory. But the photograph deceives, for it seems complete, entirely encased by the perimeter of paper. In truth what the picture reveals spills beyond its boundary, spreads out behind the frame, merges with the boundlessness of space and the endlessness of time. That lost photograph of the matriarch and her family reaches still across space and time, connected to events and individuals beyond the anticipation of its subjects, filled with the ferment of their lives at that camera moment. How the stillness of the image belies the vibrancy of that distant instant! And if I had that image, if the photo were found, I would see their eyes staring into mine, closing the circle of our lives, for my life springs from theirs, and theirs...? Theirs grows into mine.
I cannot find the photo on this side of the camera; however, if a photo joins the pictured moment to the viewer, closes a circle as it were, then travelling the circle away from the camera, away from the photograph, should carry us back towards the moment. And when we arrive at that moment we shall be looking out from someone’s eyes into the camera, into the other side of the image. If I were to take that journey back, I would see, not their eyes, but through their eyes, and the face I would look into would not be one of theirs, but my own.
Life is a trail of lost photographs. Follow me, back to moments not yet lost and look into the other side of the image. Look into the eyes you see there. Enter the windows of your soul and close the circle.
Sometimes, in egocentric moments I wonder how my kin might have looked. The currents of world events and the eddies of life carried us apart even before we could meet.
Somewhere, once, there was a photograph, a family portrait nineteenth century style, stiff backed and stern, with a matriarch sitting by her husband, son and daughter-in-law, and with four young people placed properly to the side and in front of the adults...a boy and three girls, smooth faced and with eyes looking directly into the lens of the camera. The camera seizes photons and captures a moment, archives for a time a shard of memory. But the photograph deceives, for it seems complete, entirely encased by the perimeter of paper. In truth what the picture reveals spills beyond its boundary, spreads out behind the frame, merges with the boundlessness of space and the endlessness of time. That lost photograph of the matriarch and her family reaches still across space and time, connected to events and individuals beyond the anticipation of its subjects, filled with the ferment of their lives at that camera moment. How the stillness of the image belies the vibrancy of that distant instant! And if I had that image, if the photo were found, I would see their eyes staring into mine, closing the circle of our lives, for my life springs from theirs, and theirs...? Theirs grows into mine.
I cannot find the photo on this side of the camera; however, if a photo joins the pictured moment to the viewer, closes a circle as it were, then travelling the circle away from the camera, away from the photograph, should carry us back towards the moment. And when we arrive at that moment we shall be looking out from someone’s eyes into the camera, into the other side of the image. If I were to take that journey back, I would see, not their eyes, but through their eyes, and the face I would look into would not be one of theirs, but my own.
Life is a trail of lost photographs. Follow me, back to moments not yet lost and look into the other side of the image. Look into the eyes you see there. Enter the windows of your soul and close the circle.