Photographs are amazing. Top notch. Flat out brilliant. ‘Ok… Right… Get to the point’ I hear you saying. Calm down, I was getting there. A photograph has the ability nothing else does: to pause time. Whether it is a moment to remember or one to forget, one to treasure or one to leave at the bottom of the drawer and make an oath never to look at again, photos capture a split second in time, an exact moment that nobody else has any record of but you. A memory is just a single string of recollected knowledge, buried away in your mind, but a photo is the real bearer of happiness. Or sadness.
But the thing is, when you invite a friend around, you start to chinwag over past events in the far away distance of your minds, buried under the shopping list and the kids’ music recital. Past events you both half-remember: ‘Oh, do you remember the time when…’ and then your friend thinks and says, ‘Oh yes, that’s the day that…’ Then you sit and drink your tea, until you think, ‘Oh actually, I’ve got some pictures from that day’. Then you show your friend and that starts bringing back more memories, until it all starts flooding back.
That’s what I love, everyone can relate to a photograph taken at a particular time and place. Sometimes, I wish I could dive back into a picture and relive the exact moment it was taken. In this modern day and age, we are still taking photos, even if they may be of pretentious selfies (look it up) when you’ve just spotted you have amazing cheek bones and want to tell the world. Or maybe you’ve kept an album of a particular time you enjoyed, then stored it away, discovered it a few years later and relived the years you thought you’d forgotten.
It doesn’t matter whether you look awful in it, we all have those. 97{cf38bd14298301732ca92af7ce507d55ebe40dd8a176af01ccb21f7998d03de6} of pictures of me look like I’m a contestant in the Village Idiot competition, but it doesn’t bother me. I just look forward to the days when I look at the picture and say I had an awful smile back then. And you know what, everyone will remember and smile and agree.
Jude Parker