A Photo Reflection

Just a quick note:

This is a little reflection inspired by my summer chool teacher while reading The Truth About Stories. In one of my classes he handed us USB's with images on them. We were told to choose one and write a short paragraph about the photo. We were told to be as creative as possible or as creative as we wanted. We then wrote a reflection based on some questions that were raised in class. I never got to share this with my teacher or my class so I decided to share it here.

In this photo, little Jimmy is sitting on his front porch. Jimmy comes from a bad home with a broken family. His father would abuse his mother, which led to her leaving little Jimmy and his two younger siblings at the age of six. His father is a drunk and comes home at 3 in the morning each night. He spends all his pay on alcohol and gets angry at his kids because he forgets where he spends his money. Little Jimmy took on a job to help support his younger siblings, but he too felt the stress and dependency weighing him down. At this time Jimmy is 14. He started to gravitate towards a bad crown of people near his work and got into drugs. His siblings could no longer be supported because of their dad and Jimmy’s habits. They were taken away and put in an orphanage. Shortly after Jimmy’s siblings were taken away, Jimmy’s dad left one evening and never came back. Jimmy still lives in his home and works part time at the corner store. He still manages to keep up with his daily pack of cigarettes but fails to pay for his water, heating and electricity bills.

I wrote this short paragraph about Little Jimmy. Writing a story for him was easy because when you see a photo with a little boy in ripped clothing smoking a cigarette you assume the worst and let your creativity take over. I feel that in no way I have justly represented the photograph. I don’t know who little Jimmy is or if that is even his name. I don’t know his situation or his family.

This is one of the most dangerous things you can do because stories are just stories until someone gives it truth and power. This is dangerous because I am making assumptions about someone’s life. I am giving a picture a story and am essentially giving it life. As Thomas King would say “what the camera allows you to do is invent, to create. That’s really what photographs are. Not records of moments, but rather imaginative acts” (King 43). Even when a photograph is not staged and is given to someone that wasn’t there, they then make their own assumptions about what happened. Photographs allow people to make up stories about what happened. The observer fabricates who was there and what leads up to that particular moment in time.

The story becomes your own.

Stories are all recycled, reused and picked apart. When you assume or create stories you pull information from past experiences or things you have read, seen or heard of. This reflects greatly on society today. If we can make up such extravagant stories that are depressing or sad, what does that say about the time we are living in? Is it okay for someone to look at a simple photograph and say, “Jimmy comes from a bad home with a broken family”? If I can make up this story about a photograph what can others say about the same story?

Have any comments, ideas or questions? Leave me an E-mail: deleoncaitlyn@gmail.com

Caitlyn