When I was in my 20s I could still remember everything! Every where I’d been, every face I’d seen, every thing I’d done. Somewhere along the way I realized, if that were in fact true, I had probably not done enough.
I certainly don’t worry about not having done enough nowadays. And I forget more in a day than I remember. It is OK.
I was talking with my friend Rob today about how many memories are captured in a photograph. Even seemingly mundane events are frozen around the image. Is it because I have gone back and seen the image multiple times and reinforced the memory or does the photo itself hold some of the memory? There are, of course, also photographs where I ask myself “Who is that person?” or “Where was I when I made that photo?”
I enjoy the process of looking and seeing and remembering. Somehow it is a comfort. It is a way to make sense of my world.
My father-in-law, “Bupie,” now 92, remembered an aerial photograph he’d seen in 1937 that had been made by the USDA of the family farm. All these years later the farm and the photography were clear in him mind. We went online and found a way to get a copy of it. What had been only in his mind all these years could now be connected back up with this representation of what reality was. I can almost look up in the sky and see the pilot of the airplane that was flying over the farm. I wonder if he remembers anything about it?
Photography is amazing. Not that we can capture everything, but we can sometimes bring back pieces and stimulate other parts of memory. In that regard maybe I am “taking” a photograph. Regardless, it is pretty darned amazing.
A copy of the 1937 Parr Family farm in Manchester, Michigan
Still Learning To See 