Family Photos

Like most families, photographs and paintings are riddled throughout my house. A portrait of me as a young boy, painted by my uncle, hangs in the living room with one of my sister not far from it. The walls of my room use images to tell the story of my week in Germany, illustrate the intensity of my days in little league baseball and show the excitement of a friend's bar-mitzvahs. Most commonplace in my house are the many staged family photos, which briefly take me back to the dread of having to stand completely still whilst holding a smile and ignoring every mental distress call crying out, "If another flash of blinding light hits your eyes, you better get used to using four rather than five senses." These photos have become nothing more than other pieces of my house, acting as background noise to the rest of my life. But their purpose is much more substantial than what my busy mind holds them to be: I have grown so accustomed to seeing old photographs that I often forget why they are there.

I believe that certain experiences and occurrences affect the body and mind in such a way that we are sometimes driven to hold onto that memory. Although the recording and storing of a person's neurological and physical sensations for a certain point in time is not (yet) possible, there are certain methods by which these feelings can outlive the present. Evolution was kind enough to entrust every human with a virtually limitless space to store memories of past experiences. And with the help of this highly capable brain, written word, photography and video were developed to aid our memories and store more than we can or would ever want to keep in our heads. Photographs, in particular, visually capture the happenings in life we want to remember, almost like a backup file in case of a mental failure. However, and no offense to photographs, four crucial angles by which one experiences a photo's content are unaccounted for: photographs are unable to capture smell, taste, touch and sound. A shortcoming indeed, but not a failure. I personally find that a photo's visual piece of a memory can help to trigger some if not all my other senses to go back to the moment in the photo. When I see a photo of me playing guitar, my mind briefly tricks my ears into becoming filled with hard snare drums, and I remember the bass travelling through the stage and into my legs. Photos act as a stimulant for memories to escape the dark abyss of the human mind and scratch the surface, if only for a nanosecond.

Photographs can not only help us to remember personal experiences but also present us with new knowledge. Photos of far off places or depicting historic events provide a brief glimpse into a world not one's own. For a moment, a person can take on the perspective of someone thousands of miles away or living years in the past, instilling a more personal and realistic view of a certain point in time. Without photographs, history and the lives of others is limited to written descriptions or word of mouth, and our views of contexts other than our own would be distant and impersonal. Photos are capable of telling stories and providing the viewer with not only knowledge but a different way to take in this knowledge.

 I cannot help but think that in this world, which calls for more dependence on and communication with people of differing ethnicities, cultures and nationalities than ever before, photos can help to close the gap between dissimilar worlds through a sharing of perspectives. As corny as this may sound (which is very, very corny), photos help to bring the world together.