Shoebox Stories: Childhood, Memory, and the Power of Photography
Although an important part of the history of photography, and one that I enjoy immensely as both spectator and creator, being a photographer is not just about making the beautiful, the grand, or the Ansel Adams brand of sublime imagery that so often adorn gallery walls. It is also about producing work that has something to say: telling a story, conveying a feeling, or forming a point of view, regardless of technical skill.
Like many mothers across the land, mine has shoeboxes full of old family snaps documenting decades of my and my siblings’ growth into adulthood. I asked her to pull out the pictures of me as a child for a potential project I was developing. I was not sure what to expect, I hadn’t seen most of them in years, some not since they were first taken. Many were as I imagined: markers of time, Christmases, birthdays, and other special occasions that warranted the camera coming out of its box. Oddly, and rather humorously, there were also several photographs of me ill: tummy bugs, chicken pox, a broken leg… only my mother could explain why those times made the cut! However, a few images immediately stood out. I was struck by how cohesive they were as a set and by what they seemed to communicate beyond their status as mere family snapshots.
I have no memory of these three photographs, taken in a park sometime in the mid to late 1980s. I can’t even say I recognise the boy as myself; I must be around three years old. Yet they stir a potent nostalgia. This is the power of photography: to summon memories and emotions even when what’s pictured feels unfamiliar. Another power at play here is that of marking a moment. What drove my parents to take this sequence of images on what appears to have been a completely ordinary day? Why do we feel such a compulsion to photograph one another? The simplest answer is love, a desire to look back at those we love and the love we share.
My parents had little interest in photography and no technical expertise or expensive equipment, yet on that day they inadvertently created a remarkably successful series of images. They depict not only the physical surroundings of a time and place, but also an emotional truth from my childhood, of being introverted, thoughtful, and at times, a little lonely. That loneliness did not arise from being alone; I was constantly surrounded by my family, as shown by the watchful shadow of my mother in one frame. Rather, like so many other young people, it came from not yet fitting into myself.
To me, this triptych perfectly captures that internal state. To someone else, it might mean something entirely different. Each of us brings our own narrative to an image, shaping how we interpret it, and that is how it should be. No photograph ever says just one thing. Photographs are more than records; they are sparks that ignite memory, reflection, and understanding. They prompt us not only to consider what lies within the frame, but also how we ourselves fit into the world beyond it.
Cruising for a Feeling
G: “What do you take pictures of?”
J: “Something. Anything. Anyone that takes me to the feeling.”
G: “What feeling?”
J: “The feeling of not hiding. The hiding, it doesn’t make it go
away.”
LOG ON:
It begins with craving.
Ruled by desire.
Fear of being seen.
At any moment. Every moment.
Awareness, I am made by it,
trained to conceal.
Secret observations.
Discreet walking.
Don’t look too long.
Don’t make it obvious.
Don’t not look -
because that’s just weird.
I felt a photograph.
A practical, regular, everyday kind of photograph.
Clothing - sluggish, disobedient to mother’s march.
Then: seeing.
Briefs and boxers - erect fabric columns.
Decapitated torsos of Olympic proportion.
Furrows and grooves, smooth warrior limbs,
crisp white, full and round.
Blood rushed.
Like a switch gone off,
vision turned on.
Alarm.
Tightly cropped, tighter cupped.
Sightless images staring back.
Row after row.
One after another.
Flash.
Hands on the surface.
Fingers grazing.
The exterior: smooth, dry, hard, cold.
The interior: soft, textured, pliant.
Comfort. Immerse. Retreat. Change.
Fear of being seen.
Keep watching.
It haunts adolescence.
We act our way through it
perform for them, for him, for her.
This was my experience,
and it was his,
and now it’s theirs.
I am a performance.
A truth set within lies.
The carvings on the face,
the length of the body,
the roundness of freedom.
The image is transport.
Transport to a place where rapture
spills, unrolls, pools, coalesces.
The body is real.
Flesh with hair and fat and muscle.
Youth and age.
Love and lust.
Spit and piss.
It is given and revered.
Snapped, saved, shared.
Time moves forward.
Bodies repeat, multiply.
Same again.
And again
Show me more.
Less is more,
never enough.
I create, I show, I endure.
The thickness of the thoughts
grows as I look, as we imagine.
We imagine the touch.
We imagine the sex.
We imagine the life.
The Word of Gay is visual.
It speaks to us through the image of man.
The blood and the rush.
The image of Gay is persecutor and liberator.
Feeling locks in.
Looking for now.
Right now.
The photographs are mine
and they came from us,
snapper and snapped.
Connect.
Liberated prey
cattle not meant for slaughter.
Gesture.
The print holds it.
It looks back.
Recognition sparks.
The body concedes
gives back, comes out.
I look to feel.
I take to move.
Animated by making.
Usurping ubiquity,
shaping frames that reveal.
If the feeling doesn’t come,
then neither can I.
Only when I feel
am I seen.
Found.
LOG OUT.