The Photograph

The Photograph ©

By

Michael Casey

I heard Rankin on Desert Island Discs this morning, he was a good guest, engaging and interesting. Should I go to him for my passport photos, or get him to take a few family snaps, normally I’m not in the shot as I’m holding the camera. So if Rankin is free he could do the honours.

Joking apart, a photo is a big thing, it is a memory, it’s more than a memory, it’s part of our love for the person in the photo. When my mother died I complied photo albums for my siblings so that we each had  some memories. There is a photo of mum playing to the camera with the dog’s dinner bowl in her hand, three of us have a copy A4 size, so whichever house you are in it reminds you of mum and the original family home.

When we grew up we didn’t have a proper camera,  mum had a box brownie kind of camera, it’s probably still in the family home somewhere.  In those days you had to take the camera to the chemist and there the film would be put into the camera. Film used to be like a scroll, cartridges did not exist, and as  for digital, that wasn’t even in Star Trek. Technology has changed so much. My brother collected lolly pop wrappers and sent ten shillings or less to the address on the lolly wrapper and a few weeks later we had a plastic camera. I still remember we went into the middle room and closed the  curtains while he put the film in the camera.

The processing at the chemist  gave you small photos with a white border, or later on you could send away you film in an envelope and get one large photo with two passport sized snaps at the side. I can also remember our lodger, he had a camera and he took photos of all of us playing in the gardens, without him there would have been hardly any photos of us growing up.

I became a bit  of a snapper and took loads of snaps of the family and friends at work.  My boss even said the camera was “surgically attached” to me. We stuck the photos to the fire doors, snaps of us at the pub and loads of squirrels snaps from the woods. It was very homely, years later we had a refurb so they all had to come down. The photos we have in our homes say a lot about us, do we have a sense of humour, how many kids and grandkids do we have. We can have photos of our judo club, I am of course a judo black belt and  brown braces. Our life, our loves are displayed in our collection of photos.

Technology now means we are all digital, we take a snap in minutes or even seconds you can put it on your computer and/or upload to Facebook. It also means we have to be careful or you are caught out and you are on Utube when you don’t want to be. Students try and catch you acting the fool or telling them off then with their camera phones you are immortalised. Photos are framed and the framing adds to the value of the photo, and now we have the Photoframe the technology that allows you to rotate 100s of photos instead of having one fixed frame. So much change from when photography was invented.

A home without photos is a home without love, nothing has touched that person, nothing has  been memorable, nothing has been shared, there is no proof, there are no photos. We do have Facebook now, and I suppose the Internet and  Cyberspace have becoming our living room wall. Smiles with teeth showing these are the happy photos, I’ve seen too many people trying to look “hard” or “cool”, even judo black belts show their teeth when they smile, they have nothing to be afraid of after all. So all I am saying is be open, be open to love, be open to life, and let the photograph record and share that love.