As I flip through the years faster and faster, I’ve started living more and more in the past. In my time-panic, I study old photos, wondering how I can draw their essence out. I desire to revisit those instances captured on paper and in pixels.
There may be ways to create a link back to the time-locked moments they capture.
If this had been the goal when we’d been younger, maybe we’d taken more care with those “say cheese” moments. Tried a little harder to add details and capture the surroundings with a bit more clarity.
But it’s never too late to start. I’ve stumbled on one way to preserve a moment and a place a little more effectively.
I’ve found myself taking photos that capture more than the two-dimensional, and in some cases, leaving people out of them…to add them in later. It sounds strange, but it’s a way to allow my brain to fill in the blanks.
Capturing True Life in Stills
I stumbled upon this method when I was visiting my elderly parents. I walked outside their house at dusk, turned around, and saw the warm glow of lights in the windows.
I realized that one window was the bedroom where my mom was. Then looked down and saw a basement window glowing where my dad was watching TV.
I took out my cellphone and let the camera adjust to the low light. Then snapped a couple of pictures.
What developed were photos that took on a liminal quality. Showing empty spots where people should be. The markers of humanity, but no humans. These areas can be a bit eerie, but they can also challenge our creative minds. Our brains protect us from the void of the universe by filling in the emptiness.
It doesn’t have to be rando characters going into those empty spaces. With transmuted photos, we can insert our loved ones, dragging along all our best recollections.
Anchoring Memories to Photos of My Own Home
I tried the “lighted home at night” method at my own house a few days later. Took a photo from the backyard. An angle and viewpoint I usually didn’t catch.
Got the warm resonance of the living room where my puppy was snoozing away or making her way to the sliding glass door (to be let out to see what weird stuff her dad is doing in the back yard).
Her breath and scent are a great way to imbue the photo with magical recall properties. The upstairs and the glazed bathroom window, where my wife changed out of her work clothes. This was a view of my life each day that I never noticed or considered. Always there, but unseen.
Where did I fit in these photos if I were inside, behind the glow? When I pull them up in 5 years, will I remember a very different version of myself, basically a different person?
In a sense, we are creating dollhouses. Tiny furniture, shelves, rooms, where our memories can live.
What’s more liminal than the glow in a window? Suggesting the life inside. Suggesting warmth and shelter. The love of friends and family. Stop to take notice. And maybe a photo. Those photos may be able to bring you back to that moment when you need the comfort the most.
Other Ways to Connect to a Photo and a Moment
Another way to time-travel with a photo is to scour it for historical clues. Examine the backgrounds closely. Are there any items found in the photo that you can still access in the physical world?
In a drawer? In a shoe box in the attic? By contacting someone you haven’t spoken with in years? Get your hands on it. Mount an expedition.
Like a matchbox car on a shelf, a book lying on a desk, a plate you still have. Try to track down that talisman. Cradle it. Trace its edges. This object was there at the genesis of the photo, just like you were.
Take a look behind the curtain the next time you are scrapbooking.
It’s not magic. It’s simply a reminder, a shortcut to a file in your mind.
It’s similar to the Horcruxes that Voldemort created to tie pieces of himself in different spots. He used these objects for evil wizard purposes, but we can use them for good and healthy memory dives. I wrote about placing your own Horcruxes throughout your personal history so you can return later.
Try using photographs as maps to certain memories. Or better yet, use them as reminders to contact or visit the people they make you long for. To send a note to those folks who stand behind windows. Those who exist out-of-focus in the corners of yellowing, curling film, crumbling pixels, waiting to show you something forgotten. END
Bonus Journaling Prompts: The glowing window is a common sight in video games. The dark frontier towns with little activity, but lights in castle windows or a remote cabin. Try the doors, but many of these buildings don’t open as part of the game’s narrative. Yet our minds fill those homes and keeps, letting our imaginations add extra power to the open-world adventure.
Write up a journal entry about a glowing window you capture on your phone. What the people inside mean to you. What does the liminal situation gently lead you to recall? Or write about the story that a background scene in your latest video games brings to mind. The further story that’s never explained in the game.