Take More Photos

I wish I’d taken more pictures. With cell phones, photos have become ubiquitous. Social media encourages us to document everything and share, share, share. And that isn’t all bad. I am not talking about selfies. I am talking about non-selfies. I am talking about what goes on in those moments that are frequently undocumented every day.

I was a classroom teacher for more than thirty-three years. About fifteen years ago, one of my colleagues mused that we spend a significant percentage of our life at work and we have no photos of that experience. From that moment, I started bringing my camera (a REAL camera) to school – even when a camera was also built into my phone.

But I wish I’d done it far earlier. I wish I had photos of my early days. A few are in the yearbook, but I have no candids from my classroom, rehearsals, or meetings. I wish I could see the faces of my students in the late 80s and 90s. I wish I had class portraits of those Theatre, Sophomore English, Television, and my early Freshman English classes. I wish I took pictures of the library and the resource center and even the hallways before they were changed and updated. I wish I had documented my everyday life at school – and the wonderful people with whom I shared it.

While the staff changes more slowly than the students, people come and go. Students move through with regularity, but the personnel around me is constantly shifting. Remember that student-teacher? Remember that wonderful quirky and creative kid? I usually remember. I wish I had a picture, too.

What is it about the picture that validates and strengths my memory? Why is it that I can smell and hear and feel the moment so much more vividly when the image is present than when it is just in my head? And I trust my own memory less and less these days.

I treasure the yearbooks. I treasure the old photos that people post on Facebook. They bring me back and they help me remember and cherish the people I adored. I know there is a mosaic of photos out in the world waiting to be woven together. I wish I had more to contribute to it.

I have heard it said that, by taking pictures, the photographer is not fully present in the moment. I disagree. I find that my camera focuses me on the event (yes, I am aware of the double meaning of focus in that sentence). I am more attentive and aware of an experience because I am photographing it. The camera does not pull me away, it pulls me in! I see more clearly, specifically, and exactly when I am taking pictures. It crystalized the experience.

I became my department’s photographer. I documented the events and changes in the school and in my classroom. In addition to my children’s concerts, shows, birthday parties, and games, I also brought my camera for smaller events and day-to-day moments at home and school. I treasure these photos because they bring me back to the way I felt then.

That is the key. While I do want to document the way the old writing center looked or how my daughter decorated her bedroom, what I am really treasuring is how I felt at that time, in that space, with those people. I am affirming that what we did and who we were had enough importance to warrant memorialization and its influence is lasting.

We are worth remembering. We are important enough to hold on to. Our past matters and frames our present. I wish I had learned that earlier.