Lesson #20

    As someone who has a camera roll containing over 10,000 photos (that’s not an exaggeration), I expected myself to be a proponent for pictures. I have thousands of memories taken in many different places and at many different events; however, all of my photos have two things in common: All of the pictures are staged, and all of them are edited. Everytime a picture is taken, it is not with the intention of remembering some specific, important moment-- it is taken with the mindset that this event is something that one would be proud to look back on. So out of those 10,000 pictures I have stored on my phone, how many of them are actually authentic?

    When I went to Europe this summer my parents insisted on taking pictures of “everything”-- and by everything, I mean specific things. I have pictures of the subways, every restaurant we visited, and the sights we saw; and in each one everybody in my family has a plastered smile on their face-- because this is how they wanted to remember the trip. I cannot even bring myself to look through those pictures because most of them are so incredibly fake. The trip was amazing (of course), but my dad is an extremely stressed out traveler-- and in between the smiles we were all very tense. My parents forgot to take a single picture of us all yelling at each other in the hotel rooms as we discussed where we wanted to go; and yet every time something looked “presentable” my parents suddenly remembered their cameras. So how do I look through these photos, and pretend they show the whole truth?  Am I just expected to boil down my entire trip into a few manufactured smiles?

    Now what about the more serious times-- the difficult moments that actually shape us as people. I mean thank God I have pictures of my 8th birthday party, but I don’t think that day has really affected me as a person. If pictures are expected to represent me, then where in these pictures have I developed as a person-- beyond physically? I can look back at photos as much as I want, but they do nothing to show me who I was, and how I have changed. Every single one holds the same facial expression with a different background; so let me ask… where are the pictures that show what I have been through? Who was holding the camera after my head was split open and I had to rush to the hospital? Where are the photographs of me when I had to have brain scans to make sure I wasn’t epileptic, or had a brain tumor? Why are there no pictures of those moments? The answer is because those are times that nobody wants to show the world. We take pictures because one day people will see them, and we all want to pretend that we live perfect, frown free lives. As Susan Sontag would say, “the camera’s rendering of reality must always hide more than it discloses.” By taking these pictures we try to show what we want our lives to be-- not what they are. Nobody takes pictures of the day to day boring moments (the ones that actually show our lives), because that is considered “too boring” to photograph.

    When we look at the pictures everyone posts on instagram, not a single one captures who we are. When I want to post something, my friends and I go have photo shoots--where we put on cute outfits, and make sure our hair and makeup looks good; then we find the perfect location, with the perfect lighting, and take pictures that make us look as “presentable” as possible. Then after these pictures are taken, we edit them to make sure that the entire photo looks absolutely perfect-- as it must be amazing so that others can see. The effect of this is that people become impersonable through anything digital. We look at the profiles of people who appear flawless, which makes us feel like we need to change our own lives-- hence how the cycle has continued. Ultimately this is because we have been fed a lie: a picture cannot really hold a thousand (genuine) words.

Lesson #20: Don’t rely on pictures to remember your past.