What Will You Be Glad You Kept?
What Will You Be Glad You Kept?
There are photographs we make because something important is happening.
A wedding.
A graduation.
A new baby.
An anniversary.
We understand immediately why those photographs matter.
But there are other photographs whose importance isn't nearly as obvious when they're made.
A child leaning against you in the particular way they always do.
Your father's hands.
The dog asleep in the place where he has slept every afternoon for twelve years.
The way your family fits together right now.
Or simply you, in a chapter of your life that doesn't feel particularly remarkable yet.
Sometimes we don't recognize what we're documenting until much later.
Photographs Change With Time
The photograph itself doesn't change.
We do.
Ten years from now, we notice things we couldn't possibly have understood when the photograph was made.
The child who seemed so grown suddenly looks impossibly small.
The face we saw every day becomes one we would give anything to see again.
The version of ourselves we were so critical of becomes someone we look at with much more tenderness.
Time changes what we see.
And because of that, it changes what a photograph means.
We Can't Always Know What Will Matter
I think that's one of the difficult things about deciding what deserves to be photographed.
We're making that decision from where we stand today.
But the photograph isn't only for today.
I've written before about The Portraits We Leave Behind, because I believe photographs have a life beyond the moment in which they're created.
They move through families.
They become part of stories.
They remind us of people, relationships and chapters that would otherwise become increasingly difficult to remember clearly.
And sometimes the photograph that becomes most important isn't the one we would have predicted.
It's simply the one we have.
The Ordinary Things Become Extraordinary
We tend to photograph occasions.
But much of what we eventually miss isn't an occasion at all.
It's ordinary life.
The familiar expression.
The way someone laughed.
The hand that always reached for yours.
The relationships that existed in one particular configuration for a surprisingly short amount of time.
While we're living inside those moments, they don't feel temporary.
Until they are.
That's one of the reasons I've become increasingly interested in photographing people not only for who they are, but for where they are in their lives.
Because every portrait quietly contains both.
What Will You Be Glad You Kept?
I don't think we can answer that question completely.
Perhaps that's the point.
We can't know which photograph someone will pick up decades from now.
We can't know which expression will suddenly remind them of something they'd forgotten.
We can't know which portrait will become part of a family's story long after the person who made it is gone.
But we can make sure there are photographs to find.
We can make them now.
Not because everything is perfect.
Not because we've reached some milestone.
But because this is our life.
And one day, that alone may be reason enough to be grateful we kept it.
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