“Everything exists to end in a photograph.”
– Susan Sontag (1933 – 2004) American writer, philosopher, and political activist.
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“Going to get your picture struck,” my grandmother asked me once. Granny used a variety of unique and witty sayings I never questioned when I was younger. She was obviously asking me that day about having my photo taken. But I had no clue where her different was way of asking originated.
I’ve heard the saying used a time or two since, but apparently no one in the vast wasteland of internet misinformation today has any idea where it originated. My online searches struck out.
Maybe it had something to do with striking a pose. Or with old flash systems employing powder ignited by a spark or strike. Granny was born in 1905, and my grandfather in 1888. Before cell phone cameras, so who knows?
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“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.”– Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) American documentary photographer, and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration.
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Mom took pictures. Pictures of my sisters and me. Dressed up. Eating. Laughing. Crying. Playing. Sleeping. You’ve seen old black-and-white photos like them. White bordered snapshots with serrated edges. Bound in small paper albums with the names of photo labs on the cover, or in the case of Mom’s photos, drug store names from Pampa to Childress to Ballinger. We moved a lot then.
Photographs became an integral part of my life. Personally, and professionally. I’ve taken buku bunches of pictures since the time I first packed a Kodak Brownie camera for Boy Scout camp in Oklahoma. In 1960.
Today, I share a house with a lifelong accumulation of images struck one second at a time. They reside in multiple boxes, plastic containers, photo albums, dresser drawers, shoe boxes, file cabinets, closets in three rooms, one old cedar chest. And some in places I don’t even know about.
Black and white. Color photos fading, their original hues slipping into shades of red and orange. Slides. Stacks and stacks of Kodak carousel trays. From that “Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away” time in the 70s. Thank you, Paul Simon.
And since the early 2000s, countless digital files hidden on hard drives, CDs flash drives, Zip drives, and a few old cameras cards. Keeping the slides company in one of those closets.
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“Your first 1,000 photographs are your worst.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) French artist and photographer considered a master of candid photography and an early user of 35mm film.
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For all my images, good and bad, I have an organizational plan. If my calculations are correct, I can have everything digitized, edited, and cataloged in say, 50 years? Maybe. Not counting the pictures I would have struck between now and then.
Although I never asked Granny what “getting your picture struck” implied, she shared another facet of photos I’ve come to believe in recent years to be a fact. “When you get your picture struck; it captures part of your soul,” she said.
See, I thought for a long time that she meant literally. Some religions, who I guess do mean it literally, refuse to have their picture taken.
Once what she said sunk in on me, however, it changed how I looked at pictures. Only then, I could see what she was talking about. Gazing at images of people can give the viewer a glimpse into the soul of the subject on the day the photo was taken.
I mean struck.
The eyes. The facial expressions. The body language. It’s all there.
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When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their souls!” – Ted Grant (1913-2006) Canadian photographer remembered for his ability to capture life regardless of subject or location in as straightforward and truthful a manner as possible.
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One photo that still intrigues me is a black-and-white picture, a family portrait. Made, I’m guessing about 1969. It was possibly one of the best family portraits we had made. Which doesn’t say a lot. We didn’t take many family photos.
I was in college, and my sisters were still in high school. Howard Petty, a Mount Pleasant photographer who I’ve always credited with helping develop my photography career, took the photo one night in the living room of our house on Delafield Street. That was about the same time he sold me a used Minolta SR7 35 mm camera and included instructions on how to use it.
Mom is smiling in the photo, as is Dad. But Dad smiled as long as everything was quiet and peaceful. He avoided confrontation. Usually ignored it. But when you look into Mom’s eyes, it’s obvious something was on her mind besides the photo.
I looked at the image many times before noticing it. Since then, I’ve wondered what was on her mind that night.
My sister, Leslie, was planning to marry that summer after graduation, and move. That would weigh on a mother’s mind. Plus, she was the first to marry and leave home. And so was my mom, the first of her siblings to marry, leave home, and move away.
Or was it something else? Was it joy or sadness that made her smile look different? Health? Finances? Her job? The supper she cooked; was that the time she made banana pudding and forgot to include the bananas? She was devastated, but we loved it and ate it anyway.
So many unspoken things occupy our minds. And a family photo that is potentially the last one taken with all of the children at home could weigh heavily on a parent’s heart and soul.
I do believe photographs reveal soul captured in moments of time, gone forever once the picture becomes a heartbeat in history. Often leaving generations to wonder. What was on someone’s mind that day? What was in their heart and in their soul the exact moment that picture was taken.
I mean struck.
Sadly, however, those same photographs seldom strike many answers.
—Leon Aldridge
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Aldridge columns are published in these Texas newspapers: The Center Light and Champion, the Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, The Fort Stockton Pioneer, and The Monitor in Naples.
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