Some time ago on the “Sun” newspaper, the following question appeared to its readers: “If the fire alarm went off, what would you take before you ran away?”
One woman replied, “After making sure my family was safe, I would take the photographs. I can buy it all back, but not a lifetime of memories.”
Photography has totally changed the way we remember our lives, our emotions. Through them, in fact, we find ourselves confronted with our past, declining it to the present and somehow reflecting on our future. Observing a photograph, we are free from the limitations of time, we enter into the experience of eternity.
Photographs speak to us, silently. They tell us stories without using words, overcoming the limits of concepts and transmitting timeless emotions. We find in them an image that lasts forever, but whose existence is due only to the instant it was necessary to capture it.
When we observe the subjects in an image, they always remain the same as they are, without the passage of time being able to affect them in any way. The instant and the eternal merge into one.
We find ourselves reflecting on what we are looking at and learning new facets about ourselves and the world we live in. We explore parts of ourselves that we are often unaware of, we confront opposites that dwell within us.
The visual dimension of photography is so powerful that it captures the essence of life that is constantly changing, unlike the words that try to define even what is sometimes indefinable.
Getting carried away by the images is something we should all indulge in, it’s a kind of taking care of ourselves.
Let’s take back the old photos and let’s get carried away by memories and a river of emotions.
