06.30.08
A life in pictures
If you were to pick one moment from each day to remember, what would you choose? The new and exotic, or the familiar and cherished? The whimsical, or the practical? And how would you preserve that memory for your future self, years down the line?
Nowadays, the internet makes that almost easy. Most of my the people I know keep a blog (or three!) , and sites like Twitter make it possible to preserve even a record of life by the minute. (Which might be entertaining, if someone ever decided to record their thoughts as a hangover sets in…)
These ideas had been kicking around in my head for a while, but what really crystallized them was a reminder that people are creative- and that records of daily life have existed for centuries. Yet although Samuel Pepys certainly became known for his diary, somehow, the age of photography brought whole new ways to track life.
The story I have in mind is aptly titled “He took a Polaroid every day, until he died“- it ran a few months ago, and it’s been making the rounds since. Really an amazing read- what started as a college project lasted some 18 years, cut off only when the artist died of cancer. The result runs the gamut of work and life. Some of the images are funny, while others are deeply personal- but what they have in common is that they all capture a moment of someone’s life, frozen in time for all to see. The entire collection is well worth looking at, because in the end, it’s not contrived- it’s all about noticing the little joys that come every day.
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I’ve toyed with the thought of doing this in my own life, solely for personal curiosity- though given my refusal to buy a modern cell phone, I’ve quickly realized that just having a camera handy is sometimes a challenge in itself. That’s particularly true when I travel (ZOMG! No photographing the security checkpoint- we don’t want the terrorists to know we have metal detectors!!)… so if you think you’ll be out in public often, the handy portable Guide to Photographer’s rights might be worth packing in your camera bag.