I had a conversation with a friend today that covered 30 years of lost contact. It sent me searching for a photo I knew I had stored away. My friend probably doesn’t remember the exact moment this picture was taken, although the date should be pretty obvious. I am sure he didn’t realize his image was traveling much of the world over the last three decades.
There are a lot of photos in my box. I can't bear to throw away a picture, even of a person I don’t remember. After all, at some point that person was important enough for me to want to record his or her existence in my life. And of course, there is always the chance that one day I may have the same trouble recognizing myself.
For me, digital images are not as personal as actual printed photos. Being photoshopped out of a jpeg doesn’t make the me cringe the way I do when I think of my face being cut out of a picture and run through a shredder. And the thought of being stored digitally on a hard drive somewhere is not at all the same as imaging paperdoll-sized versions of me living in shoe-boxes in closets, or tucked away in attics or even, dare I hope, staring out from the walls of Debi Alkire shrines.
No comments:
Post a Comment