Everyone has heard the line that “A Picture is worth 1,000 words”, but have we really given any serious thought to what that could mean? In today’s world, where good pictures can be taken with your phone, at any time, what is it that we are capturing, and why do we even need a picture?
With the advent of the internet, it isn’t uncommon to discover that your attention span for any given subject has decreased dramatically. With so much information available with the next click of the mouse, do we really stop and think about what we see, or do we just click to move on, addicted to what is next instead of what we have now.
I’m fond of many Tumbler sites, some of them quite pornographic, others are more eclectic, but I find all of them fascinating. For those of you not familiar with tumblr.com, it is a place where you can post a visual blog, a stream of pictures that fascinate you, tell a story, of a similar them – whatever strikes your fancy.
One of the tumbler sites that I follow is myselfixion, a site that can be pornographic, but has far more pictures that suggest another time, another place. The author of the site is very fond of old military pictures, tintypes, things from the past.
Every picture that is posted tells a story. You don’t know what the actual story is, and that is the beauty of sites like this – you can look at a picture, and make up your own story to match the picture.
Take our adventurous young man on the left, who has decided to wander into the lake.
From the ripples spreading out to either side, he is obviously moving, not standing still.
His arms are raised. Is this to help him balance? Or, like myself when entering a body of water, is it cold, and the raising of the arms just helps stay warmer for just a little bit?
Where is he going? Is he heading to the trees on the other side? Is he headed for the rainbow? Looking for the pot of gold? Why is he naked? Who else is there? Who took the picture? There is a storm coming, or a storm has just passed, so the time of day is hard to discern. Is it afternoon? Evening? A rare morning storm?
How about our friends Pete and Robert from 1947? From the scenery behind them, it is a family beach, but neither of them has a girl in the picture. Were they out with another buddy, who is behind the camera? Are they boyfriends? One of them has wet hair, he just came in from the surf, the other appears to be dry. In another picture just before this one, the man on the left is shown in a side view wearing aviator sunglasses, and the one in the dark trunks is shown on his knees, with a cigarette hanging from the right corner of his mouth. From the houses along the left side of the picture, this could have been taken along the North Carolina shore, or perhaps even somewhere in New England. Pete and Robert would be approaching 90 now, if they were still around. Do they remember this trip to the beach?
Then there is the plain bizarre. Here are four young men, all apparently close-shaved, wearing what appear to be the same color and style of shorts, playing a game of cards, while wearing gas masks, with one of the men having a rifle propped across his lap.
It is outdoors, on what appears to be a nice day, with a lake or river behind them, as they sit on granite rocks, in what may be a marshy area.
Are they participating in a military exercise and just passing the time until the drill is over? I remember from my time in the military that unless you were skilled in “hurry up and wait” you could be frustrated much of the time. These guys are barefoot, with little to speak of in the way of clothing, so they obviously aren’t going to go very far in a hurry.
Perhaps I’ll post more from this and other tumblr sites I like, and try to write actual stories about what I think the subjects are doing and thinking. Of course I’d have no way to know that I was even close to accurate, but it does amuse me.
These pictures also help to remind us that in days gone by we were preceded by people who were very much like we are. Curious, adventurous, handsome, cute, ugly, fat, crazy – we aren’t the first to invent any aspect of life or human behaviour. We are but one link in an unending chain of life, and that is what pictures help us remember.