Ghosts on paper
Behold, a simple old photograph. You probably have dozens of them quite like it in a trunk downstairs. You don’t open the trunk much because when you do, moths fly out and there’s a reek of age and must. Very unpleasant. Who needs to endure that just to clap eyes on a picture that’s not even in color, for chrissakes, and of people who are long dead?
To me, that’s just it. Old photographs chill me in that they are true representations of people frozen in a place between the living and the dead. These are ghosts. Each man, woman and child shown here is long gone, gone so long, in fact, that little will remain of the corporeal shell. They lie in graves somewhere, mere dust and maybe a few teeth rattling around in a rotting coffin.
But look at them here, faces trapped in this flat dimension. Old photography did not produce much by way of depth. There is no bright color or sharp background. These dead folks are stuck in a flat, monochromatic world, resurrected over and over any time someone picks up that square of paper and examines it.
And what facts can be teased out of that world, if any at all? This might be a happy and prosperous family from the turn of the 20th century, or it could be a group of the most unhappy souls ever to walk the world. Maybe the well-groomed gentleman went blind, became poor, died miserable in debtor’s prison. Maybe his bride became mad, locked herself in a rambling farmhouse and ate her youngest child when the food was gone. Perhaps the eldest boy witnessed the atrocity, became deranged and killed for the rest of his natural life, only to return as a ghost in the old house and in this surviving photograph.
In fact, that’s my issue with photographs. I sometimes fear that the very paper on which the images exist may become haunted, those trapped souls reaching out from the pixels to communicate with or to torment the living.
More on this idea to come. I’ve gotta return some stuff to the trunk, and lock it.
April 30th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Is this the begginings of a new book? Please? Not that I’m begging mind you!
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Makes me think of Aussie Aborigines belief. Once someone has died, no one can ever say their name again. For students of metaphysics, it is about calling up souls who may or may not bless us or even curse us with their energy by influencing us with their unresolved agendas. Many believe that we attract “souls” to us because their agenda is similar to our own, and that on another dimensional level, reinforce us, meaning that when I get upset, these kindred souls actually reinforce my energy, sometimes magnifying its intensity beyond where I would take it myself.
Doesn’t every culture have its way of dealing with the losses of others? I have some of those old photos and wonder if I am recalling them in some way when I view them. What we some of those “great greats” think of me if they met me today? in the context of their mores and their level of technology and knowledge of human nature/yes, even before they knew about developmental levels of human growth would they “use me” on the basis of universal feelings ” feelings of being ignored and left out, not honored for my views” etc. After all, do the issues really change in the human experience?. Yeah, I think you’ve got a helluva book here with many many conceptual possibilities.