Despite the gigabytes of space I now have on my phone, representing virtually endless storage on a camera that's always with me, I still find myself feeling that my time with my son is woefully under documented. As a divorcee it comes with the territory I guess -- limited time that I want to capture with him, yet only occasionally can I share space in a photo, those moments when I'm not the one holding the camera (I'm not a selfie person but that's another essay's worth of explaining why). I am fortunate to have some photos taken by talented friends, that capture something natural and spontaneous in truly beautiful shots, but these feel too few and are limited to those times our paths cross.
For families, collecting photographic evidence of a moment, preempting the later date at which they'll be looked at is often second nature -- little care is given to when these photos might be looked at next, they're taken because they can be. My family has stacks of photo albums stored in a cupboard referred to as "under the stairs," blocked by a sofa and stored alongside other items just as rarely needed; light bulbs, a broken photocopier, fuses. The idea that they're there is enough.
Unseen they might be, but they are printed at least, and occasionally retrieved to be pored over. Now the proliferation of camera phones and endless memory sends the majority of images for a life on a tiny chip or over to cloud storage never to be seen again save for a brief appearance on a Facebook newsfeed.
The days are long gone in which a 24 exposure roll of film taken on a family holiday meant photos were rationed carefully, with upcoming moments carefully placed in an order of priority to decide if they warrant using one -- and only ever one -- of the limited photos available to take. I have strong memories of visiting a drawbridge and taking photos with abandon, using up a huge number of my allotted 24 photos, as my dad advised not too take too many as they wouldn't come out and there'd be no film left for the coming days. I don't even remember where the bridge was, but that moment is preserved even if the photos aren't.
And so, as I long to capture the fleeting weekends in which I see my son, to make the moment last long after we have said goodbye for another week, all those lessons my own father tried to teach me are discarded and like seeing the drawbridge so many years before and free from the need to ration shots, photos are taken at every opportunity, and from every angle. Perhaps I'm trying to do 'family' as I now relate to it, the images from years ago contained in the dusty photo albums my parents have. Maybe I'm hoping that by adding to it and continuing it, the legacy contained in the albums adds legitimacy to my broken family.
Perhaps too there's a fear that comes from having seen how life can change so quickly, and in ways you cannot expect, that one day my son will need to see them to be reminded of something he no longer remembers or feels -- that smiling photos might not be enough and that he'll need to be reminded of who was making him smile. Those are my concerns though, not his -- the effects of a custody battle and the associations that come with it, the determination to be a good father and the desire to be seen being a good father.
It becomes an obsession at risk of obscuring the moment itself, so keenly do I feel the need to document a moment together; somehow feeling that having photos makes me a more legitimate father after a custody battle which inherently suggests you aren't, my evidence stored safely like the family photo albums under the stairs in my parent's home 3,000 miles away. When I meet with my family, I tell them clearly that I want photos to be taken, and they're alerted to watch out for moments to capture and are happy to do so, yet I can't help but feel all we catch is something very artificial as I put on a performance, aware of the camera, careful not to be caught mid sentence with distorted mouth or mid blink with eyes half shut. I want a photo that captures the moment, yet so often end up with one that captured the third attempt to walk down some steps, seconds after my dad has said "do it one more time, I nearly got it." Capturing frustration in those photos is not missing the moment; you've captured the moment perfectly, you just made it frustrating.
Perhaps the greatest clue to the futility of these attempts comes, as wisdom so often does, from the innocence and naivety of a child. My son is well aware that on my phone there are stored moments from his past as we look back on those images of him fondly -- feeding birds with grandad, seated ready for take off on a plane, exploring a beach. So when I attempt to capture a new moment to add to this collection, I'll say to him "let me take a photo," and while I'm detached from the moment, gazing into the phone screen to view the world through an electronic representation and attempting to capture something I think will be valuable in years to come, my son's inability to see the long game is his virtue and my greatest lesson. For him it's all about the moment we're sharing right now and he vanishes out of shot, climbs onto my lap and grabs the camera in order to see the screen only to wonder what exactly I had been hoping to capture in this now empty shot.
Away from the lens, the answer is sitting there right on my lap, a moment worth missing on camera.
Ruby Photography NYC