The discovery of photography revolutionized how the world views itself. Photography revolutionized my world. I’ve been making photographs most of my life.
When photography was discovered, it seized the world’s imagination. Eventually it gained the status of art while also being employed in forensics, documentation, medicine, advertising, pornography, family memorabilia, and portraiture. Photographs also serve as instruments of social control as used on driver’s licenses, passports, and wanted posters we see appearing in public places.
In a historic comment on the arrival of photography, the French artist Baudelaire quotes disdainfully how, “from that moment our squalid society rushed, Narcissus to a man, to gaze at its trivial image on a scrap of metal (referring to the daguerreotype.) A madness, an extraordinary fanaticism took possession of all these new sun-worshippers. Strange abominations took form.” Fortunately for Baudelaire no selfies were taken then. I can only imagine the poor man would have gone bananas.
In the year 2014 alone, an estimated 800 billion photographs were taken worldwide. My guess is that most of them would be of children, sunsets, sunrises and selfies. Even in 1853, considering that photography was in its infancy and copies expensive, over three million daguerreotypes were produced. From its very beginnings, photography was wildly popular. The great chemist Sir John Herschel – not a man given to exuberance – upon seeing his first daguerreotype exclaimed, “This is a miracle.”
It might seem odd but our thoughts first begin as images, like photographs. The images provide the nucleus for the thousands words that will be forthcoming as we begin telling others our stories. In a sense, we are walking cinemas, carrying in our minds flicks that run non-stop, 24/7. Only a small percentage of those images will we ever become aware of. In our lifetime we will sleep though much of the show although, as we dream and if we recall dreams, we will be reminded that the show goes on long after we’ve gone to bed.
When I began taking and printing my own photographs in 1947, I thought making photographs was magical. I decided to create my own photo album. The album had black pages in which I inserted photos into paste-on corners. I recently came upon that album and was surprised to see how selective the subjects of my youthful photographic excursions were. They suggest my emerging pubescence, which I evidentially felt some need to document.
When I was about thirteen, through a stroke of luck, my skill as a photographer began to be recognized. The principal of my school discovered that I took and developed my own pictures. He invited me to be the school photographer. I was to take pictures of school activities, present them to him and he’d place some in the school paper.
Thirteen-year-old boys first welcome their erotic consciousness with delight but then with apprehension. This is why, at school dances, and on the playground boys remain on one side, clowning and punching each other in the arm – a time worn strategy for boys to keep safe distances from the girls who swirl around and giggle on the other side.
Just going up and talking to girls required courage that few, if any of us including myself, could muster. Such a move was like a charge over no-man’s- land. I soon discovered, however, that my position as official school photographer provided me with just what I needed to engage girls in conversation. My status as official photographer conferred on me a kind of professional legitimacy that made me feel safe in conversing with girls at dances or around the school play ground. I worked it for all it was worth. Remember, now, this is sixty-seven years before selfies. The girls welcomed the invitation to be photographed and while they stood around me chatting, I felt as if I was a celebrity and I luxuriated in the new thought that I was now “the man.” I photographed lots of girls.
At first, it never entered my mind that I was anything but selfless, offering my skills pro bono, as it were, in the interests of serving my school.
One day, a couple of my classmates took me aside somewhat furtively, and asked me if I might take a picture of Sallyanne, or Joyce or Elise, generally regarded as the class beauties. I seized the opportunity, struck a deal– baseball cards, bubble gum or a few pennies in exchange for snapshots. My portrait-for-profit excursion didn’t last long, wasn’t all that lucrative, although I had my first taste of running a small business and how satisfying it can be when you also love what you are doing.
I hadn’t seen the album for years. I found it recently and saw pictures of the various haunts on the Island I’d inhabited as a boy. Many of the surviving photographs were the girls of P.S. 29 and one included two of the beauties beauties.
It’s odd how both old photographs and our mind’s eye preserve moments in our lives as though time could be momentarily stopped.
If I should meet any of these girls today, they would seem total strangers to me.
There is a time for everything under the sun. When the times up, we’re left with memories and dozens if not hundreds of old photographs.
Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.
Rhonda Townley says
I really enjoy Mr. Merrill’s monographs on life. And “Engaging Girls in Conversation” could be the headline to this one. He described perfectly the early teen angst of how does boy meet girl, or does he even want to? Carry on, friend, carry on.