Behind the Digital LensMusings of an Amateur Photographer

6th Feb, 2011 Historical Photography

I’m not a young’un by any means, but I remember sitting in some of my ancestors’ parlors as I was growing up looking at black and white photographs of people I didn’t know who were long dead, listening to the chatter about this person or that and who they married and their kids, where they lived and went to church, and on and on.  When I was a kid, I just found the photos interesting, but the historical value of the genealogy went in one ear and out the other, much to my regret many years later.  Many of those photos are long lost to me; distant relatives may have them or they may have been lost to an estate sale, a garage sale, fire or other natural disaster.  I still have some that were passed down to me, but again, the people on the pages of the albums I have stare back at me emptily and I have no clue who they are, where they were photographed, or when.

But, what is mostly missing in all of these photos are events.  Not just in those people’s lives, but things that went on around them.  Missing are the babies, the christenings, the family gatherings, the church socials.  Missing are the weddings, the deaths, the elderly, school classes and graduations.  Gone are photos of their houses and farms, their gardens and crops and animals.  The men behind the plows being dragged through the dirt by mules.  The rainstorms and floods, the snow storms and blizzards, or fields blossoming on a Spring or Summer day.  The rides on trains, or early 20th Century cars.  No towns with grocery stores or fruit and vegetable stands, gas stations.  Missing, too, are the signs of poverty or wealth.

I am sure that there are people with ancestral photo albums that have these things documented, and I know that photojournalists have archives filled with these kinds of photos, as well as having published thousands of books.  But, there are far more of us that have dusty albums with black and white photos of nameless men and women and children that are missing these kinds of photos.

Today, however, in the digital information age we are able to inexpensively capture the “times of our lives” and document the events around us.  We have the ability to share the photos we take with millions around the world, or family across the country.  We are able to publish inexpensive books and caption the photos so that everyone will know who is in the photo and what is going on.  And scrapbookers create beautifully themed albums that can be handed down from one generation to the next.

We should remember, though, to not ignore the events that are all around us outside of our immediate lives.  We need to move outside the doors of our personal lives and see those we work with, go to church with, visit with and grow old around; our towns and cities that change every day, along with the weather and the landscape.  We should not forget to pick up our cameras and take photos of more than just our loved ones or the sunset or flowers; we all want to capture that “magical” moment that is worth a thousand words or a thousand dollars, but that is not all that our lives are about.  Even I am guilty of forgetting that.  Our cameras, digital, film and video, are valuable tools for recording our lives, our histories, and our demise for the generations to come.  We just need to look beyond our digital lenses and and record those events that shape our lives and the lives of those around us.

We are, in essence, the digital historians and documentarians for our descendants.  We should never overlook an opportunity to record an historical event – good, bad, or ugly.  Someone, many years beyond our lives, will gladly thank us for that photo of Aunt Mary in her Hallowe’en costume when she was eight, or Grandfather Bob playing football in high school, but labeled and identified; or for the photos of the cars buried up to their roofs in the great snowstorm of 2011.  Take it, print it, label it, record it forever.  Not for posterity, not for personal satisfaction, but for history.