From Files To Frames

I've never really felt excited about any of the gen eds I've taken. This semester I am in an introductory photography class, I never thought I'd get super into it, but these two assignments really changed my perspective. 

We had  to write a 500-word essay about our parents’ experiences with cameras. At first, I didn’t think much of the assignment. It felt like a lot of writing about something I didn’t particularly care about. But as I started listening to my parents talk about photography when they were my age, I realized how different their relationship to images was compared to mine. They told me about using film rolls, where every photo mattered because there were only so many you could take. After finishing a roll, they had to wait weeks for the photos to be developed in a darkroom studio. They had to deal with the anticipation of not knowing how the images would turn out, and also decide on what was worth capturing. That surprised me, especially when I compared it to how casually people take photos now. Obviously we can have as many retakes as we want and can look at our photos right after but sometimes we just take a few pictures on our phones without thinking and move on. I recently did a deep dive into my camera roll and felt almost embarrassed by what I found. Most of my photos are screenshots of lecture notes, grocery lists, and pictures of food. I mean I guess I capture moments of my life but they're images I don’t revisit or value. They're just files taking up space.

Later that week, I went into my mom’s office for the first time in a while and noticed the photographs she had displayed. I've definitely seen them before but I didn’t really see them. I never studied them in the way we were taught to in class. Some were black and white, others in color, they sat on her shelves, her desk, and wherever else there was space. Brightly colored folders spilled from their holder, not perfectly aligned, some leaning into others as if they were mid-conversation. post it notes clung to every surface, it was clear that she is a maximalist. Most of her supplies rested openly on the desk instead of inside drawers. The room felt busy but it also matched the vibe of her photos. The frames were various different sizes and colors perfectly capturing each era these photos were taken in.  It made me feel like  photographs once carried more meaning. They were something worth preserving and protecting. Now, images feel disposable. We seem to capture everything, yet hold onto almost nothing.

My favorite image that I saw in that room was this one with my mom and dad on a fishing boat. She looked to be in her early 20s and she was glowing. But she wasn’t making a specific face. She was expressionless yet still managed to appear elegant. This brings me to the second assignment we did for the class (our midterm), where we had to mimic an artist. I chose Rineke Dijkstra. She has a series of beach portraits. I thought photographing people would be the best thing to do- especially since I have experience taking my friends insta pics. I took some photos I liked but then my teacher told me not to have the people in my portraits smile, and at first I didn’t understand. Smiling felt automatic. There's just something so satisfying about contagious smiles because then the person viewing it is bound to smile too. But as I took the photos, I understood what she meant. The softness of a relaxed face was really interesting to look at. It reminded me of my mom in the fishing boat. It makes me look at a photograph longer, as I try to guess what she could have been thinking about at that moment.  I took portraits of my close friends for my project. It was kind of  shocking how unfamiliar my friends looked. I know their faces. I know how they laugh, how they react,  how they exist when no one is watching. Yet in these images, they felt distant. For the first time, it felt like I was seeing them from a stranger’s perspective. It was really cool to see my friends in a different kind of way, I enjoyed being able to see them again, as if for the first time.

(Pintrest) 

When I was selecting the photos to choose to display for my midterm, I ended up scrolling through them for longer than I realized. I felt kind of proud of them. I still return to them from time to time, opening them again just to look. I've never felt proud of photographs I've taken before, it was weird. It gave me the same feeling as being really proud of a writing piece. 

(from my moms office:))