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I take –
and delete –
a lot of photos
of myself.
Let me tell you why:
Looking
through photos,
I have no choice
but to see through
the camera's eye.
Sometimes
I take 100
photos of
{{!!now!!}}
(most of them missing
what was).
I aim and
wait, snap
and stow,
then delete
and stow,
then delete
all but 3.
Because
Because
“My God, that's the face
I made at 1 – and 5 and 8 and 10.
It's the look I'll give out at 63,
and as an octogenarian,
And it's not about my face – fuck my
face –
I had a dream where a dog stole my nose
And lips,
and I cried,
but then looked at these eyes
in a mirror – still my eyes. I arose
With this look.
And THIS one – keep this one. Where I'm sad?
It was true, and I hated being there.
So save this ugly, honest
posture in mind, and if you
see me any sunker, beware.
And THIS one.
This one, where you
teased out my smile while the
lens-shutter
blinked
at my face?
That photo's not of me.
It's of being with you –
just a scene
of my
favorite
place.”
*Thanks Jessica P. (Luminarium & Long Beach), Julie P. (camera-adjusting), Krista L. (skeleton frame), Zack Z. (the serious business of posing), Otis R-G. / Chuck Close / Amy M. (child eyes / painted eyes / pet eyes composite), Laura C. (snow day nanny), Aaron WR. (a breath above water), Chris N. (reluctant abduction), Alfred Eisenstaedt (looking up a fish mouth – Florida 1956), & Cindy R. (palm-reader) for making this collage full.
ReplyDeleteI know this is a hard position to believe – especially in our current culture, where people post publicly on social websites such a glut of poorly-aimed, superficially posed, “look look I'm doing something!” photos. But I promise, that's not how I take selfies. I take selfies to catch moments of life that I feel in my body - and that I think my body shows in those moments - and that are valuable to reflect on.
I think everyone should have a catalog of images that they think reflect who they REALLY are. Personally, I would like to know how my friends see themselves, the real core that they feel: the face, the look, the essence in them that I should be watching for. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” So here you go world: here are some frames of me. – 18 April 2013
I really enjoyed this poem because it made me think about the real worth of a picture. I agree that today it seems like people take them just to show off to others or even to see how many "likes" they can get, and I'll even admit that I have been guilty of this crime. But what I love about this poem is that it reminds me of why we save pictures. What's the point of keeping a photo after you've shown all your friends and received all your likes? It's to look back at a memory. I think it is best summed up when you say, "That photo's not of me. It's of being with you-". I also love the structure of the poem. To me, the stanzas almost look like faces. Not necessarily human faces though. I'm not sure if that was something you were actually going for, but that's what came to mind when I looked at them.
ReplyDeleteI definitely understand the place this poem is coming from. I understand the desire to see yourself in a specific moment from a neutral perspective, to try and capture how you look when you are really feeling, whatever that feeling may be. I often find myself doing the same thing; people sometimes confuse it with vanity and I have had a hard time explaining to them what you have so elegantly conveyed here. I also appreciate the way you shaped the poem, as if the poem itself is a photograph of your true emotional state when writing it, a kind of back and forth from one memory to the next as you look back at your photos. I feel that there is an element to this poem that was left untouched however; that those 97 pictures that were thrown away had to be true, they couldn't possibly have missed who you are because they captured you in that specific moment. If you take these pictures searching for emotion, searching for feeling, not a specific feeling but any profound, visible one, then you are bound to throw away all the pictures that capture the in between, who you are when you aren’t sad or you aren’t in ecstasy, and these moments to me seem to be the most true and real. I understand that the objective of the pictures isn't to capture your face but rather to capture that which reflects a moment in your life, everything about that moment, and this, to me, is all the more reason to keep every photograph. Why keep the moments that you feel reflect who you are instead of keeping every possible combination of light and shadow that actually reflect you, something you can look back on and say “ this was me.”
ReplyDeleteTake your proposition, "we should keep every picture, because it's who we are" to it's logical conclusion, and you'll see why you shouldn't:
Delete-->Every second is me
-->every second I don't capture on film is a second of me I've lost
--> click, click, click, infinity ...
--> now I'm dead. Look at all of these pictures. They'll mean nothing to you because you didn't know me, so they're symbols without referents. And the pictures you took of me looking at pictures of myself ... well, gawd, that's embarrassing. Hell, just burn them all with me -- except the few good ones.
You ARE the in-between photos, Thomas. All of them. But better, because you're real & they're just images. So save the truly meaningful pictures and dump the in-betweens; they're old news: spend more time living and less time trying to save it (then is gone, now is all that really matters).
I enjoyed this poem because of it's observation of the lack of depth within most photos. People always choose the prettiest picture that captures a front rather than the one that tells the truth of the situation. The way you, if you actually do this, sort through each individual image really summarizes how a photo should be able to provoke a deeper thought or emotion. The examples of the photos that genuinely captured that situation rather that just a face serve well to support the whole moral of the poem; that people should value and keep those sort of photos. I guess my only question is about the outline of the poem. Was it to convey another sort of meaning or simply because you wanted it like that?
ReplyDeleteI shaped the first third like a lens, the latter two-thirds as an echo off of that initial form.
DeleteWell-read.
This poem made me reflect on my own life. How when I look at a picture I think "that doesn't look like me, that's not what I look like." But when I think "okay, what do you look like Talia?" I can't come up with an answer. I know my general features, but that doesn't seem to encompass who I truly am. I suppose this could be because I am more than just a face, I am a person with a soul and a mind and emotions. In my english class we're reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and this poem instantly reminded me of when the Indian remarks that McMurphey didn't act the way he looked. That his huge body could seemingly create elegant letters written on a piece of paper. Sometimes the outer image can't reflect the inner truth or potential of a person. Though a photo, depending on the situation in which it was taken, get close to the truth of the people in it, the picture still can't show everything inside the people. I realize that you're poem doesn't really address everything that I've said, but this was the reaction it triggered and I think that sometimes that's the point of poetry and literature in general. That a story can be seen by multiple people and remind them all of different things because each come with their own unique stories and histories.
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly why I write poetry: so people like you can come along and make it more than what it is.
DeleteI'm glad that you took the time to recognize what it was saying first -- a lot of people jump right to forcing a poem into their own preconceived meanings (but then they're not having a learning conversation, just repeating what's already in their head & twisting the world into agreement) -- when people read a poem like you have here, it turns the work into common property, which is what I think every sincere writer really wants.
I didn't want this poem to stay just mine. So I'm glad to know now that it's yours and mine.
What immediately drew me to this poem was the idea of the permanency of a photo. When a photo is taken, it's not just the person in the shot that's present. It's also their thoughts, emotions, and personality in that specific moment. The fact that the moment in the photo never changes, even if the person does, can either be a blessing or a curse. Most of the time it has absolutely nothing to do with one's face or features, as you have pointed out. What is often hated the most is the moment - the person - that is forever trapped inside of the photo. For me, the emotions attached to a photo outweigh the photo itself. Even though this may not be the intent of this poem, this poem triggered this idea of permanency for me. The line "Looking through photos, I have no choice but to see through the camera's eye" illustrates this very idea that the camera captures the honest moment. That moment in time is forever framed.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading “Framed ...” because it captures the way I feel about photography. I love taking pictures so I can remember a moment, not because I want to take perfect pictures of myself. Sometimes the quality of the photo and what is actually captured is secondary to actually having a way to remember an important part of your life that may have faded with memory if you had not been able to capture it, even if you end up looking horrible in the photo.
ReplyDeleteI think that "Framed..." really focuses on the timelessness of photography, though it shows how photographs don't really represent the time period in which they were taken. I like how the poem takes aspects of society that we highly value, both technology and memories, and demonstrates that photographs are not very accurate representations of our lives. I really love in particular how the poem takes an object so mundane and turns it into a real-life scenario, bringing daily life and history to it and therefore making more relatable for an audience. In general, I feel that as a society, we'd like to think that photographs are nostalgic keepsakes for the enjoyable moments of our lives and should be associated with warm feelings. We often forget that the photograph only includes what we’d like it to include, while we leave out the other parts of our lives at that particular moment in time that may not bring us those same feelings. In that way, photographs become more like our own recreated histories that focus in on the positive and forgetting the bad. Although, the last few lines of the poem do bring that feeling of warmness to my heart. I think this shows that you can also find this craved sentimentality if you really think about your picture and what it was depicting at the time. Considering this mentality as well, I can’t tell if the man likes or dislikes the idea of photography, but the poem really takes you on an emotional journey with the man as he discovers each photo, which also really lets you connect with the poem in the end.
ReplyDeleteI think the speaker clearly like photographs - that's why he takes the time to explain to his listener HOW he sees photographs (not in a clingy way, but rather like a dedication).
Delete