Marks are made on a piece of paper. You look at the marks and, in your mind, make them into a sentence.
Marks are made on a piece of paper. You look at the marks and, in your mind, make them into a picture.
Marks are made on a piece of paper. You look at the marks and, in your mind, make them into blood stains.
In a post on The Online Photographer called Then and Now and Here and There Youngme–Nowme, blogger Mike Johnston talks about the fun in looking at pictures (or movies) of the same person (or people) taken over the years.
You, whoever you are, are part of the pictures that get made from those side-by-side comparisons. For example, I have seen Nicholas Nixon’s Brown Sisters series at random moments over the years. The photos in the series (which I have seen many times before) look different to me each time I see them.
If I had photos for the YoungMe–NowMe contest referenced in Mike’s post (one photo of oneself as a child along with a nearly matching pose as you are now), I would make, in my mind, three pictures from my two presented. There would be the me that I, at the time (as a youngster), saw in the YoungMe picture, the me that I now see in the YoungMe picture, and the me that I now see in the NowMe picture. In theory, there would also be a me that I might have seen as a youngster looking at the NowMe (the old me) picture.
Had I been looking at the YoungMe photo over the years, I would have made different pictures over that time span. Pictures are made in your mind. You, whatever the current state of your being, make the picture as your mind finds it at the moment of looking.
Mike Johnston’s pictures of himself, which he occasionally posts in his blog, are, to me, sometimes pictures of an obviously wise and perceptive man, and sometimes pictures of a complete jackass — depending on how I feel about what he has recently written in that same blog.
-Julie
