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A companion piece to yesterday's post.
Sometimes what makes the pictures my dad took when we were kids interesting is the stuff that isn't us; the elements in the background, the strangers, like that kid in the yellow truck in circular pursuit of my sister. What ever happened to him? And that mother leading her two away. I don't remember women's dresses ever being that long. I don't remember riding in cars like those in the background either. I remember the grass being greener, but this might have been at the height of the summer when the sun is right overhead and washing the whole world out.
I try to get closer over at No Talking Cure where you can embiggen the image, but truth is elusive, which is the point, isn't it. You can talk and talk, or squint and stare and try and figure it out. But what does it all mean? That's the hard part.
Speaking of yesterday, back to that review of books on torture in the London Review of Books, the authors of a book on the standard operating procedure at Abu Ghraib prison devote a lot of time, apparently, to dealing with those infamous photographs which came out. "Photographs cannot tell stories," they write. "They can only provide evidence of stories, and evidence is mute."
Really? I don't know. I'm thinking of Graham Greene (1904-1991) again. I'm thinking of mystery and the past and time and a lot of things I don't have the time to explain right now.
"Take a picture, it lasts longer," you used to say at someone you caught staring. I stare and stare sometimes, trying to figure things out. Trying to remember.
Sometimes what makes the pictures my dad took when we were kids interesting is the stuff that isn't us; the elements in the background, the strangers, like that kid in the yellow truck in circular pursuit of my sister. What ever happened to him? And that mother leading her two away. I don't remember women's dresses ever being that long. I don't remember riding in cars like those in the background either. I remember the grass being greener, but this might have been at the height of the summer when the sun is right overhead and washing the whole world out.
I try to get closer over at No Talking Cure where you can embiggen the image, but truth is elusive, which is the point, isn't it. You can talk and talk, or squint and stare and try and figure it out. But what does it all mean? That's the hard part.
Speaking of yesterday, back to that review of books on torture in the London Review of Books, the authors of a book on the standard operating procedure at Abu Ghraib prison devote a lot of time, apparently, to dealing with those infamous photographs which came out. "Photographs cannot tell stories," they write. "They can only provide evidence of stories, and evidence is mute."
Really? I don't know. I'm thinking of Graham Greene (1904-1991) again. I'm thinking of mystery and the past and time and a lot of things I don't have the time to explain right now.
"Take a picture, it lasts longer," you used to say at someone you caught staring. I stare and stare sometimes, trying to figure things out. Trying to remember.
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