In nineteenth-century photographs, nobody is smiling. The subjects sit rigid and stare out at you with cold, serious expressions. You might think humor hadn’t been invented yet, but actually cameras in those days had such long exposure times that no one wanted to hold a smile for that long. People, at least, can be instructed not to move; photographing animals proved more challenging. One early photographer decided that the only way to get a pair of stray dogs to sit still long enough for him to take their picture was to shoot them with bullets, stuff them, and position their stiff, lifeless bodies in front of his camera. In the resulting photographs, of course, the dogs appear to be alive.
This brings us to our next story, which also features photos of things that seem to be alive but aren’t. Photographs connect us to the past, fading only a little over time, especially compared with our memories, which quickly become vague and distorted. Since the dawn of photography people have obsessively compiled photo albums, keeping important memories locked safely in place. With the advent of digital cameras, it’s not unusual for a person’s personal collection to run to hundreds or even thousands of images. But what if all of that disappeared? What if a handful of photos were all that remained to remind you of an entire world, now lost?
Our next story is about just such a collection, and, as in nineteenth-century photographs, in most of these photos, nobody is smiling.
My ex-girlfriend May used to accuse me of starting every story or joke straight in the middle. Like she had to ask a thousand questions just to figure out what the hell I was talking about. I’d just babble on and she’d have to route me back to all the concrete facts about the case at hand. I can’t help it! I’m bad with beginnings: I’m suspicious of them as they are. Life doesn’t begin, not really.
Well, life begins in the physical sense, but as far as your memories go, it’s not like that. It’s not like one day you remember things, the day before you didn’t. These memories kind of fade out back, little moments, like a vision of your dad’s face, the way the back porch smelled. The rest you got to fill in, you suppose all together. A lot like pictures, really. People all frozen in these expressions they never really have because you caught them in mid-motion or something, you have to fill in who it is and what they’re about based on that one moment.
So I was talking about them the other night, but here they are for real. Twenty-three snapshots of San Francisco; the last roll of shots I ever took, the last roll I ever got developed. The end of my brilliant amateur photography career.
I guess the roll had twenty-four exposures, so I’m not sure why I only got twenty-three. Maybe it got underexposed or overexposed, maybe there was some kind of error when it got developed. I’ll never know. I lost the negatives, so these prints are all I have.
#1
Freeze frame of me, awkwardly leaning into a picture with May and her Japanese pen pal, Kyoko. May’s got an expression from the tail end of a laugh, Kyoko has this half smile while flashing a peace sign at the camera for some reason. I’m standing there, looking like an idiot. Forgot to brush my hair, my hands are shoved tightly in my pockets. I made the mistake of putting my arm around May while Kyoko was around before all this, and May got all weird on me. So I’m just standing there.
If you look hard enough, you can sort of see Alcatraz in the distance, sitting in the waters of the San Francisco Bay. Behind that, faded by haze, is the Marin Headlands.
Yes, this was before everything happened. Maybe you think so because we were smiling in that picture. But I think people smile for pictures out of habit, really.
#2
Picture of the famous “Painted Ladies”: Victorian houses in old San Francisco, in a park in the middle of the Western Addition. You can see a few people sunbathing in the grass just before it to the left. I’ve never lived in houses like that, but I bet it’s nice. Admittedly, they look better in the post cards, but they’re still quite pretty.
Behind the Painted Ladies lies the whole San Francisco skyline, including the Transamerica Pyramid. To the right you can see a pillar of smoke rising from the southern part of the city.
#3
Just May and Kyoko, hugging each other and grinning. Close up zoom on their faces, so close you can see Kyoko’s acne scars. That old gray 7 Seconds tee shirt that May’s wearing, that’s mine.
In the background people walk past and stuff. I think this one was taken in the Japantown Peace Plaza, but I don’t remember.
#4