The photographs that my family possess may as well be daguerreotypes. Aside from their non-digital nature, the images in our family collection are of people who are dead or are radically changed from their juvenile or younger images. To view a snapshot unseen for decades can jolt a person. A deceased relative or friend may live again for at least an instant as that portion of one's brain dealing with memory is dramatically stimulated by the likeness, and in turn, the remembrance of its owner's personality and many a forgotten idiosyncracy. The faithful re-creations of one gone, often results in an experience the effects of which are not, at first, so terribly potent. But contemplation of the picture, "seeing" a ghost or otherwise focusing while intently ruminating on someone from the past, may move one from a state of inurement to one of discombobulation with tears of regret, longing or even rapture.
Several months ago I happened to chance upon a black and white photo of a high school friend, taken over forty years ago. It was one of those "good" photos, the antithesis of the variety that are regretted with the usual phrase "it doesn't do him justice." No, this was the youthful lad we all knew, his exuberant visage, familiar Slavic features and assertively friendly ways all brought back in a nano second by the immutably on-target phenomenon of what a camera accomplishes. The pleasure derived from restarting a memory, as it were, is further injected with an indescribably powerful charge when (as in this case) it's discovered via cyberspace's relentlessly efficient sources that the subject of the photo is long dead. Assuming the invulnerability of those frozen in time in our emotional and mathematical calculations is the chief culprit of this shock.
These records of what the eye and the heart both see, can bog us down. Sometimes they may aid us too well in our search for intimacy with our dearest shades. This may especially be so with the clinging to a memory of an erstwhile or impossible relationship of the living as well as the dead. A young Judy Garland comes readily to mind as her character pines for Clark Gable while cradling his framed photo and singing "You Made Me Love You". In Henry Clay Work's (1832-1884) song "The Picture On The Wall" (1864) the traumatic, psychic rape of our divided nation is expressed with skill somehow beyond merely that of creating a haunting beauty, through the singer's grieving reveries while drinking in the daguerreotype of a slain son. The practice, more common than in less recent years, of displaying photos and mementos of the deceased at a wake, is an obvious choice for enhancing the effect of anecdotes and personal stories. Still, one may become stuck, i.e. an almost masochistic mono mania is a real danger as growth, change and the descendants of the dead are somehow less valued and healthily celebrated as the new torch bearers of our Family of Man.
Several years ago I attended an outdoors show for classic automobiles. This particular event is perhaps the hugest of its kind on the East coast. One's special favorites, however obscure or old the make or model, are fairly likely to appear and delight the aficionado seeking to satisfy his particular taste for automotive nostalgia thanks to the tremendous volume of vehicles. But with the wondrous variety of specimens of America's automotive history, come a variety of persons (owners) from many walks of life and not all with a predictable psychology relative to the past. One gent had his 1955 Ford Crown Victoria with its original two-toned colors (bright yellow and black) vividly restored and a head-turner of the first order judging by the crowd gathered. Yet, the group seemed less delighted than awed or even disquieted by a closer inspection of the vehicle. A faded letter had been affixed to the inside of the rear driver's side window. It told of young love, embarrassing expressions of the same and still more extravagant outpourings of emotion only a callow fellow would dare to immortalize with ink on paper. The missive was dated "Purgatory, 32nd of Never 1956." On each of the old classic's four tires were (the pair of fender skirts were removed and proudly displayed on low pedestals to the side of each rear wheel), instead of the factory hubcap, a very beautiful lucite-like clear convex disc encapsulating the black and white portrait photograph of a pretty young woman in the short bob and choker often seen worn by a co-ed of well over half a century ago. There was something awry in her expression despite a winsome smile. There was clearly something wrong with her image in quadruplicate and where it appeared. No one in the crowd said a word, not unlike those who scrupulously respected the photographs of missing persons that abundantly adorned countless billboards and lamp posts for many weeks hard by the ruins of the World Trade Center after September 11, 2001.
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