Who We Were(n't)

We've all seen these types of photographs before. Children, pausing from their activities to look at the camera, and smiling. They are an almost expected part of childhood for many people. Parents want to capture this moment in time, their child at this specific age.

If asked to describe the children in this photo, one might say they are happy children. They might say that they are energetic, that they like to play. Just looking at this photo people develop in their minds their own version of these children person based solely on appearance. And by the nature photography, that’s really all we have to go on.

Being a primarily visual experience, photography is almost designed to be deceptive. No matter how wide a lens a photographer uses, the frame will inevitably end, leaving something out. And no matter when the photograph was taken, the subject (or subjects) are bound to change. You can never be sure by looking at a single photograph what that person or place is really like.

This is especially true of photographs of children. You can almost never make an assumption about a person based on a photograph of them in childhood. Childhood in and of itself is a period of growing and of transition. We are very seldom the same people now as we were then. Photography tries to capture who we were at that moment, to help others hold onto the memory. But even then, is the person captured in the frame who we really were, even back then?

For instance, the girl furthermost left in the photo appears cheerful. But, for all we can really tell she could have been a quite petulant and disagreeable child. We have no way of knowing one way or the other. This isn't what first comes to mind when viewing these types of photographs though. We don’t think: “I don’t really know much about these people,” but instead immediately begin to construct a personality around what is apparent to us in the image.

Photography then can be deceptive without even trying to be. And it’s not the physical paper and ink of the photo that is deceptive, but rather how our minds react to them and the conclusions we sometimes draw from them.

(image from galleryhip.com)