Memories

One of the things about documenting moments on film, or in art, is that it makes your memory of those events more clear. I read somewhere that as a photographer, it’s important to put your camera down so that you can experience fully the moments that might otherwise be seen only through the filter of the camera lens. I agree, however I also believe that my memories of the people who were so important to me in my youth are made clearer because of how many documenting images and pieces of art I have dedicated to those I focused on most clearly.

As a teenager who was fascinated by art, I focused a lot on hands. There were many reasons for this. The first one was that my hands were the one part of me I always felt were beautiful, even when I had no such feelings of beauty or worthiness in any other aspect of myself. The next was how challenging hands are to draw. Ask any artist who draws or paints; hands are one of the most challenging body parts to draw correctly without them looking distorted or awkward. The third was that I tended to focus on things considered ordinary or mundane for beauty and interest, and hands are something we take for granted but are actually quite graceful and impressive. Think of the art ones hands can create, the music hands can bring to life, the comfort your hands can bring to loved ones in pain or loneliness.

Because of this, I took many photos of my friends’ hands, and I can actually remember the look of friends I had 20 years ago. I remember the hands of my best friend, the callouses from playing guitar, the lines of her hands, the purple-blue of her veins in her wrist, even the shape of her fingernails. I remember the grace of the fingers of another friend who I absolutely adored, although I cannot now remember much more than bits and pieces of the time we spent together. He had beautiful hands, and they were used to create music, hold his daughter, paint beautiful surrealistic oil paintings. These are the type of detailed memories I don’t really expect to have of people I have not seen for close to 2 decades, but yet I still do.

Everyone knows that photographs capture a moment in time, that they can be framed and hung on the wall, or put on social media, but in my opinion they can capture something more significant than that; a piece of your memory you might otherwise have lost.