Late Saturday evening, my roommate burst through the dorm room door holding up a set of Walgreens envelopes. "I've got pictures!"
Color me surprised, I thought. My roommate Adrienne has a wall full of snapshots -- everything from landscapes of Fort Collins to late night study sessions at IHOP.
After spring break, there are thousands of envelopes in drug stores across the Valley or hiding in digital camera memory cards just waiting to be shared.
You can tell a lot about people from the way they treat photographs. To my great dismay there are people who find photographs depressing. A professor once told me that pictures are a record of our losses. Granted, wedding photos of failed marriages aren't exactly worth their weight in gold.
But I would much rather follow Adrienne's conviction that photographs are a reminder of all the moments that make us feel alive -- goofy instances captured just a split-second after the event in unmeasured light and scarred by red eye or blurriness to the outsider.
But for those who were there for the moment, it is perfect. As time passes by, we collect volumes that can so candidly tell what our priorities are. In "Suspended Conversations: The Afterlife of Memory in Photographic Albums" by Martha Langford, the publisher writes: "...[photographs] tell intimate and revealing stories about individuals and families. Contrary to those who isolate the individual photograph, treat albums as texts, or argue that photography has supplanted memory ... the photographic album must be taken as a whole and interpreted as a visual and verbal performance that extends oral consciousness."
To use the old cliche, a picture is worth a thousand words -- the thousand that is sometimes so hard to convey.
Some psychologists who study photography hold that they are a way to corrupt and alter the memory. Photography (especially in an age of digital alteration) is a medium that serves to convey a viewpoint, often one opposing factual events.
Sociologists see photographs as personal souvenirs used to construct both an individual and social identity through treasuring memories.
Whether you buy into the theories of self-identification and aesthetic reality that scholars propose, it is undeniable that the visual medium of photography (often enhanced either digitally or by simple scrapbooking) is an important means of communication.
E-mailing or sending pictures to family members and friends is the closest we come to sharing our lives with those far away. In a frantic era, we reflect through photographs: landscapes of a recent road trip, portraits of those we love and candids of random situations are often the only reminders of the time too quickly gone by.
One day we will be able to look back at them and let them complete the narratives of "One time on spring break in college, me and this girl..." and "My junior year, we decided to go to San Diego one night..."
For those of you as excited and involved with photography as my roommate and I are, I suggest you try something new. And there is no better time than when you are picking up your pictures from break.
Instead of simply shoving them into a photo album, treat them as pieces of art. I get a kick out of giving them periods and Picasso-like titles (a favorite being "Large Cotton Candy with Breasts"). Photographs are evidence of the days of your life. Don't wait for the picture perfect moment. Just start snapping.
Lucia Bill is a journalism and political science sophomore. Reach her at lucia.bill@asu.edu.
