Memories

Subject: Memories

As we get older we draw on our memories for the sustenance which is slowly ebbing away, memories of our childhood, youth, early adulthood, and the middle years.

Each set of memories comes packaged in their own box or sweet-tin, isolated and unpacked from time to time like the old photograph album to wonder at those images, moments in time, usually celebrations with people, now gone. A wedding, a birthday, a holiday on the beach, the extravaganza of our lives captured in aspic by the carefully contrived process of taking a photo. Not for them the quick sudden urge to remember a moment in time but a carefully thought out process. The distance and the focus, the aperture speed to capture moving objects, the light meter to test how much light there was and on that hung the amount of exposure to give the photographic film inside the camera as the chemicals set about the reproduction of the scene. The whole process was first in the mind of the photographer, his or her appraisal of the scene, was it photographically apt, did it have the right mixture of light and shade, were the buildings striking enough or the river in proportion, did we not also contribute in our minds, extra features which the photograph couldn't possibly capture.

To day we simply point and shoot leaving the camera to make all those adjustments which were the skill of a good photographer. Like much in our life, point and shoot is enough since there is no cost attached and the images we throw away or retouch to present not what was there but, like fake news, what we wanted to see.

Everything is instant gratification, not the long wait having sent the light sealed package containing the exposed film to the manufacturer, (usually Kodak) for them to work their magic. In about three to five weeks, depending were you were in the world the postman pushed the glossy photos through your letterbox to provoke a smile or a grimace as the memories flooded back.

If you were traveling and the scenes foreign, you often had to scratch your head to recall who or where it was but usually it brought back the moment and if you were sentimental a pang of what might have been. My drawer is full of photos, some of them much older than me, photos of my mom and dad, monochrome shots of billowing skirts and plus fours striding down the promenade at Blackpool. That world held sway for a long time as we edged our way into new fashions by retaining the simplicity of the annual holiday. No thoughts of going overseas, even a trip across the channel was too much of an adventure in my dad's time and the collective Bank Holiday day out with the other villagers in a charabanc was pleasure enough. The Blackpool illuminations, a feast of twinkling lights was a marvel for those brought up on simple pleasures and we should take care not to sneer at people who had the capacity to enjoy themselves with simple home spun pleasure.