Photography…WHY?
My parents have a red velvet box (at least that’s how I remember it…maybe it’s not like that and I made that up in my head!) full of old family pictures. I can remember every once in a blue moon looking at that box full of dust in the closet, and laughing at it. I recall my old philosophy in life, “why should you even take pictures? all they do is end up getting shoved in a drawer or closet and you never look at them again…you just move them from house to house because you can’t do life without them, but you never see them…the dust from them would just make you sneeze if you did look at them, so why would you?” I remember that conversation…I used to joke with my parents about it every time they would take a picture with their disposable camera.
I mocked it.
Looking back, I am slightly surprised that I had that philosophy. My grandpa LOVED old photographs. I remember it vividly, he had photo albums…a white one with a gold design on it, a green one with a gold design on it, and I think a red one too. He loved to show it to anyone and everyone that walked through the door. The albums were worn down, slightly falling apart. The photos were falling out (which those of you who know my grandfather know that he also liked to fix things…so he would tape those pictures back in with whatever he could find around the house…even if it was a band-aid). But it was something he loved, something that he would get all worked up about when you’d open one of the plastic paged albums. There were pictures of old houses, pictures of his kids when they were young, pictures of grandkids, pictures of his days in Germany, pictures of who knows what…literally. Going one step further, he loved growing his photo albums with one of the old Polaroid cameras (you know, the ones you’d put the cartridge in and take a picture…blow on the picture as it came out and within 4 minutes you’d have a complete photograph in your hands). He would make my dad go to the store just to buy more film for his Polaroid camera.
I must have gotten some of his appreciation for this in some way.
But what on earth am I going to do with the tens of thousands of pictures I’ve taken from this year? I get that question all too often to ignore it. Let’s just say I don’t have any clue. I seriously have no idea what I’m going to do with them…but I’m open to suggestions!
So I don’t know what to do with them…why the heck am I doing this?
I must start to ask that question as well, I am living much of my life behind the lens of my camera this year. People tell me that the photos I take are great, my teammates take them for their blogs all the time, so there must be something good about them…but still I must ask, why? Just to let them collect dust on DVD’s and store them in my parent’s basement forever?
OK…why do I take pictures to begin with then?
Today I was at a Vietnam War museum. There were tons of photographs hanging on the walls, all with nothing more than a very short description of what’s happening in the picture. But then there was one wall full of pictures of photographers. I started looking at the pictures all over a little closer. I had to. I looked at the pictures for what they are worth. Each picture has a story to go with it. Each person in the pictures has a story. Most have stories of hardships. Many have stories ending in death…it was a war museum after-all. I simply couldn’t let it go today as I looked into the eyes of some of the people in the pictures, or as I looked deep into the landscape of some of the pictures. I read a quote on the wall by Neil Sheehan talking about photographs…
“…Photographs are the images of history rescued from the oblivion of mortality. Long after those who died to take these photographs are gone, long after those of us who knew them and survived them and remember their experience are gone in our turn, the images they captured will remain to show generations to come the face of the war in Indochina.
…Yet all of these photojournalists of Indochina prevailed in the end. In a war in which so many died for illusions, and foolish causes, and mad dreams — these men and women of the camera conquered death through their immortal photographs.” –Neil Sheehan
A part of me has died this year. The old self is withering away to nothing, and the new me is {hopefully} shining through. That’s it. Many of the people God’s led me to this year have little voice in this world much beyond their village. Many may never see much beyond their village’s limits. Only a few people from outside the village will ever meet them. But I did…and I can take you there through the photographs, and the stories. I’ve been up against a wall writing blogs lately, I’m 100% uninspired to do it…and I’m convinced that it’s a spiritual stronghold. There are plenty of people out there that I think you NEED to meet. I met some of the greatest people in the world in the past several months, people that you may never meet unless I introduce you to them. In the same way, these people need to meet Jesus…and unless I take Him there, they may never meet Him. It’s really a two-fold ministry opportunity…I can introduce these people and places to you…places that NEED your prayers to cover them daily…and I can in turn introduce them to the ONE that they need to know.
Yesterday my domain name expired…I didn’t have any clue that it was going to expire…it just did…and within 12 hours of it expiring, I had 4 e-mails telling me about it. I guess that’s what did it for me…God’s screaming to me to keep on doing it. It’s what confirmed to me that people really do look at those pictures. It confirmed to me that it’s not wasted effort, or wasted space on some storage space in cyberland. I am seriously looking for what to do with these photographs…as Neil Sheehan stated, when I leave this world, the photographs don’t…so what now? So what if they live on…it still means nothing if I hide them in a drawer or let dust collect on them in a closet.
