The Importance of Photography
Posted April 3rd, 2011 by Kevin with No Comments
Whether you like it or not, your memory will fade. Details will become fuzzy and you will think that you remember all of the details of a time and place, however, your memory will build those details as it wishes not as it really was. It is important to archive memories not just in our mind but in photographs to pass those moments on to our families, friends and to future generations.
My mother was and is to this day a great documentarian of her family’s life through photographs. As a child I complained that she was taking too many pictures and, with the help of my brother, gave her tons of grief. She always won the battles and lots of pictures were amassed. She took dozens of slides and every year we would sit down as a family and, using a projector, watch the slide reels over and over. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized how important those photos are to me. Now when she asks to take a picture with me I oblige and I see in her the happiness that capturing those memories gives her. I now have that same happiness in taking pictures for myself.
Documenting the events that change a nation are equally important as those happy family moments. To a certain extent far more important. Still photographers that get in the thick of things during major world events freeze moments that sometimes get washed over in video. They lock in the emotions and scenes in a fraction of a second for the world to see and for the world to remember. It’s those photos from the terrorist attack on September 11th, Hurricane Katrina and more recently the devastating earthquake in Japan that make us remember the frailty of life. Those photographs make it possible for us to not rely solely on our fuzzy memories for the important details.
Photography plays a major role in history and in the future. The family photographer, war documentarians, photojournalists all have one of the most important jobs in the world. Archiving it. With Facebook, Twitter and other media outlets being driven by anyone who has a computer, photography plays an even more important role. They spread across the world in a matter of seconds allowing the opposite ends of the Earth to come together to view what they otherwise would have to wait to see on TV. Visual documentations of important events are now seen as they happen, in real time.
It is more important than ever to record those images that you want to remember. Whether it’s a first birthday, graduation, tragic disaster or human blight, keep archiving the world around you and keep sharing those images. When you are telling your story to the next generations you can show them exactly what happened as it was, not as your fading memory thinks it happened.
Posted in
Uncategorized
Tags archiving Documenting history Kevin Zimarik Photography photojournalism St Louis
Written by Kevin
Follow me:
