Photography and Honesty

On some level, I don’t get the point of picture-taking. If you ask people why they take pictures, you’ll likely hear that it’s to preserve memories. The thing is, if you think about it, the vast majority of pictures we take are essentially lies, or artificial.

I was just thinking about this as I perused (SN. I recently learned that I’ve been using “peruse” completely wrong. I thought it meant to casually browse. It turns out it means the exact opposite: to read with great care. Who knew) some recent Abby photos. There’s one where she’s with her uncles and everyone is smiling. Gives the impression that Abby and her uncles are always having an uproariously good time when they’re together.

In reality, I was behind the camera doing my usual shenanigans to make Abby smile for pictures: facial expressions, peek-a-boo, what have you. It was successful, as is witnessed in the final product. (In fact, it even made Giwoong laugh. That has to be like a Top 5 life highlight.) But it’s not honest, you know? It’s preserving a memory that didn’t really happen. Nowadays, with Photoshop and everything, we can be even more extreme in preserving memories that never occurred.

I dunno, I’m obviously fine with it, since I do it, but on some level, what I really want is an accurate representation of the time. I look through our pictures and it bothers me because it’s so not representative of our lives. We go to small group every week, but we barely have any pictures of that. But we have tons of pictures of when out-of-towners visit. It’s totally skewed.

For another example, a while back I took this picture of Abby where she’s completely sick and looks miserable. It’s not a picture that made me happy, but I still wanted to preserve it, just to remember what she went through. And I’m glad I did. It was a hideous sickness, both severe and long-lasting, that makes me grateful when she’s healthy. But both my mom and Jieun hated it, and I’m essentially banned from taking pictures like that again.

We also have several videos of Abby where she’s completely whiny, as she sometimes gets; so whiny that snot is pouring out of her nose from having cried so hard. I love it; it’s representative of a part of her character. But it’s not something I can post.

As usual, I don’t really have a point. Just, I kind of wish it were more possible to preserve real, representative memories, not just posed ones or idealized in the moment ones. Boring.