For the Record...
I’m 47 years old. There are roughly a dozen-and-a-half photographs in existence of my life through my first thirty years.
Don’t take this the wrong way - I’m not sitting around wishing I had more photos of myself, but I do sure wish that I had more photos of my life. This is one reason - the primary reason - why I recently started taking photography more seriously. It’s about paying more attention to documenting our lives and making sure that my kids don’t end up with just a handful of pictures of their early years.
Things were different back then, for sure. I grew up in the era of Polaroid instant cameras and Fotomat, and then later, disc film cameras. You had to be really intentional about taking photographs. Each pack of Polaroid film only had eight exposures. Each flash bar had a finite number of flashes before it’s burned-out hull was ready for the bin. If you had a “real” camera, you still only had thirty-six exposures per roll of film, and then you had to drive your film rolls or discs to the Fotomat, leave them for a week or two and then drive back and pick them up. And if you opened up your envelope of prints only to find out that you missed the shot? Tough luck.
Like most things, the whole process is infinitely easier nowadays. And like most things, we’ve lost that intentionality precisely because it is so easy. Despite the fact that everybody has an instant camera with them at all times, fewer and fewer people take picture-making seriously.
I can remember riding in the car to the Fotomat. I can remember the crisp burn of the flash bar. I can remember the thick packets of three-by-five prints. Whatever happened to all those photos, I have no idea. Probably in the same landfill as my childhood toys and clothes. Whatever - I don’t want any of that stuff back.
What I wish I did have are pictures of all the places and people and pets and stuff that made up my first thirty years. My first concert, my pets, my first (or second or fifth…) guitar. A picture of the playground at North Franklin Elementary, where we used to spend entire summers. Or Gabby Market, where I once almost had a heat stroke. (I was stone-blind as I paid for my pint carton of iced tea. My vision didn’t come back until we had sat outside for a while in the shade.)
An old classroom, an old teacher, a baseball field, a shopping mall, my first boombox, my first date with my wife - literally anything. All of that - it now only exists in my very imperfect memories.
All of the spaces in and around and between those memories - that’s what photographs are supposed to fill in.
I don’t blame anybody but myself for missing out on that. I was completely capable of procuring a camera and film and all the rest. It was nothing but a lack of foresight that kept me from doing it.
But now I’ve got a chance to correct that mistake.