25. Snapshots – Dinah Lenney
A picture is worth a thousand words. Or 5000, or 500—or however many you please.
I woke the other day in a panic: truth is, I haven’t been dutifully keeping a journal or record (or so I first thought), and these days all running together the way they are, I couldn’t remember when sheltering-in-place began. What had I been doing with myself since the world started to shut down? When was that exactly, how long had it been?
Then, whew, I realized: I did, I do have a line to what I’ve been thinking and feeling; a way to retrieve my ordinary life (or most of it anyway), stored in my phone, in my photos, in picture after picture after picture. (Prompt after prompt after prompt. You see where I’m going, right?) Whoever said a picture is worth a thousand words (actually, he was a guy by the name of Fred Barnard promoting the use of images in streetcar advertising circa 1927) was absolutely right. A picture is worth a thousand words. Or 5000, or 500—or however many you please.
So okay—maybe you’re not like me, obsessively snapping away all the time. Still, I bet you have pictures; and don’t you love them? The ones in your phone, the ones in that shoebox in the back of the closet; the ones you’ve framed and hung on walls, or arranged on the shelves, or on the back of the piano... Couldn’t you easily give us a thousand words on that shot of your mother/father/brother/sister/friend/lover? On that house, that road, that mountain, that tree—that ocean, pond, puddle? I bet you could. I know you could.
– Dinah Lenney
Prompt:
Choose a photograph—maybe you took it, maybe you’re in it, maybe you cut it out of magazine just because it delighted your eye: the point is, the image doesn’t have to be beautiful or good, but you saved it for a reason, right? It means something to you.
Your job is not to describe the picture. You can—but the point is to let it take you somewhere. How does the photograph make you feel? What does it make you remember? What’s your relationship to the people or place in the picture? And, whether or not you know them, does a story come to mind? If you don’t remember when the photo was taken, that’s fine: let yourself conjecture. What do you imagine happened the moment before or after the click? What might you know about the past or future that the photographer or subject does not? Who isn’t in the picture? What’s just outside the frame, in space or time? If you could, what would you ask the photographer (or subject) now, a day, a month, a decade since the moment held in the frame? Tell us what you believe or fantasize, beginning or ending with the moment that the photo was captured.
And—here’s a bonus: Now that you’ve written about a photo you possess, one you can look at any old time, write about the one you wish had been taken; if only that moment had been captured—but it wasn’t. In this case, with this photo that doesn’t exist—describe it in living color. (Unless, of course, it’s black and white.)
P.S. Here's a picture of me and my little brother, who is finally recuperating at home after 11 days on a ventilator. I might write about that.
Deb Melillo
Location: Saratoga Springs, NY
About: I would never have thought to write this essay had it not been for Prompt 25. It inspired me to draw on one of the things I love best in this world, which is travel. I am a newbie writer at age 66 and just trying to find my voice. I realize now I have a huge repository of travel memories to draw on for inspiration when I put pen to paper.
Age: 66
The Photo
The photo has a name even before it’s taken: Calm Amidst Chaos. I know I shouldn’t take the photo. I feel sheepish, guilty. But I want the picture badly. I frame and click.
It’s the profile of an older Moroccan sitting in a souk in Tangier. Fabrics hang behind him in the cramped little space he calls his shop. He is probably a tailor. Or maybe he sells cloth. He has no customers at the moment, so he reads a well-worn book splayed on his lap. I am close enough to see the writing in Arabic. I see his lips move silently in prayer.
The dazzling, sensory blur of the medina buzzes around him. Tiny shops bulging with carpets, leather goods, and pottery are crammed side by side in the narrow streets. Moroccans dressed in long djellabas stand in front of their stalls ready to lure passersby. Chickens squawk. A call for prayer blares from a distant loudspeaker. Open barrels heaped with yellow cumin and red paprika flash their colors. The air is filled with the scent of grilling kabobs, fish, and spices.
Yet I am fixated only on the Muslim shopkeeper who prays. Oblivious, peaceful, purposeful.
It’s the foreignness of the scene that speaks to me. As an American, religious devotion in public is unexpected. Quiet contemplation in a busy workday a rarity. Maybe the scene stirs something I need in my own life ---the ability to turn off the world’s noise and go within. Whatever the reason, I feel an urgency---an overwhelming desire--- to capture this image. Even if it is forbidden.
Moroccans are notorious for not wanting their pictures taken. Older people, in particular, will hide their faces, wave you away, even give you a verbal scolding. With so many tourists eager to capture the culture, Moroccans are wary of being treated as an exotic species. They feel violated when their picture shows up on social media, one younger Moroccan told me. Women can get in trouble with their husbands for such public displays. And certain superstitions make people camera shy. The Curse of the Evil Eye and the belief that bad luck can strike due to the jealousy of others is still taken seriously among many traditional Moroccans. An individual can cause harm simply by looking at another person with his “evil eye.” That includes a tourist staring through a camera lens.
***
Back in America, the Moroccan man in prayer is now a glossy 8x10 print. It’s a gorgeous photo. I am pleased with the composition, light, and color. I tell myself it deserves to join the gallery---a hallway in my home dedicated to my best photographic portraits. Twenty framed photos of individuals, varied in culture and costume, grace the wall. Images of Hmong women in Vietnam, a 12-year-old Buddhist monk in Cambodia, a proud mother at her beehive hut in Swaziland ---each photo reminds me of treasured travel.
I look once again at the photo in my hand. Something in me hesitates. I see a shopkeeper at prayer, just as I remembered. It evokes a sense of calm in chaos, just as I envisioned. But the photo triggers another memory, too: the internal debate moments before I took the shot.
Ask permission to take his photo. It’s the right thing to do.
He will likely say no.
So be it. Show respect.
Asking for permission is awkward! The photo would be staged! The mood broken!
Then don’t take the picture. Let it go.
I won’t put it on Facebook!
You are rationalizing.
I’ll be discreet. His privacy won’t be invaded!
Untrue.
Since my trip to Morocco, I’ve had a chat with my “lesser angel.” I’ve faced and forgiven the craving and touristy entitlement that made me take that shot. I want to think I travel and photograph differently now. But this photo, I realize, is tainted. I set it on the table. And walk away.
***
A week later, I find myself reading an online discussion about forbidden art. I learn that many traditional Islamic scholars argue that paintings and sketches of humans and animals are not permissible. Their reasoning stems from the prohibition of idolatry and the belief that the creation of living forms is only Allah’s domain. But photography is another matter. Many of these same scholars contend that a photo is nothing more than a mirror image of divine creation and therefore allowed.
I look once again at my 8x10 print. Maybe this is just a mirror image---no more, no less---I tell myself. And for a moment, hope flutters.
Untrue, I decide. I know the photo is more than what I saw through the lens. It reflects the light and shadows of me---the one who took the image.
I place the shopkeeper in a box. On a shelf. Out of sight.
Flynn
Location: Stuart, Florida
About: Well, the onion spoke to me, of course.
Age: 58
The Onion
The perfectly good onion sat there in the dark silence of the cupboard doing what perfectly good onions do in the dark silence of cupboards, which was, practically speaking, nothing at all.
Unmoving, it was silently waiting to serve the purpose of its life, and that, to its best ability.
You see, deep down inside, the onion felt it was tremendously capable of SOMETHING. It wasn't exactly sure of what that 'something' was, but, most certainly, without any doubt, something indeed.
Every few days, the door to its existence would open for several yet fleeting moments. The onion sensed the rustling. It felt the vibrations of The Other Objects next to it being moved about. Sometimes The Other Objects were removed and returned; other times, removed only never to return.
Over time, and every time The Other Objects moved, the onion began to slip further and further behind The Other Objects on the shelf.
Still, it had hope. Call the onion an optimist.
The onion thought, "One day I will be FREE!!!"
"I'm going to be GREAT!!!"
After a few weeks or so, the onion began to grow restless. Now, ever closer to the back of the shelf, it decided to amuse itself, and quite possibly The Other Objects as well. When it knew that no one was outside the cupboard, and it was absolutely sure that no one was listening, it would sit there in the dark telling jokes to The Other Objects, and often singing goofy, made-up songs in a simple effort to kill its increasing boredom:
"I am the eggman!
I are the eggman!
I am The Onion!
Kookookachoo!!!
Hahahahaha!!!"
The onion cracked itself up!!!
The Other Objects, not so much.
They just sat there acting all Billie Eilish.
"Duh."
So it was that the days came and went in the dark, silent cupboard, with the onion still having no one to talk to, and nothing to do, stationary, and very lonely, even in spite of The Other Objects, who never said anything and who also seemed never to listen.
Somewhat frightened, and stressed, the onion was growing unsure of its fate.
And, well, growing.
Finally, one day, the onion rose up, threw its sprouts to the ceiling of the cupboard and loudly exclaimed, "I AM HERE! I AM ALIVE!! TAKE ME FOR WHAT I AM!! I LONG TO BE FREE FROM THIS DARK SILENT PLACE!!!
(This sudden outburst from the onion absolutely freaked-out the unsuspecting head of garlic sitting directly in front of it, but that's another tale for another day....)
In the house, the onion's keeper heard the uproarious commotion in the cupboard, and quickly walked over to it thinking, "what the...?"
He opened the door and peered in, seeing The Other Objects to the front....the shocked-looking head of garlic....and...finally....
"OH NO!!! THE ONION!!!"
He pulled it by the sprouts out of the deep dark back of the cupboard.
Unfortunately, it became readily apparent to the keeper that, in its current state, at least for the most part, it was now too late for this once perfectly good onion to do much of anything.
Basically, though still alive, the once perfectly good onion was now unable to serve its purpose. Its outer skin was dry and cracked, and it had begun to succumb to rot.
"PLEASE!!!," cried the onion, frantically.
"PLEASE, don't just throw me away like some piece of rotting FRUIT!!!"
"I BEG YOU, SIR!!! GIVE ME ANOTHER CHANCE TO PROVE MY WORTH!!! MY GREATNESS!!! I WILL SHOW YOU!!! I CAN....I CAN BE....I CAN BE....SOMETHING!!!
"PLEEEEAAAAASSSEEEE!!!!!"
The onion's keeper sensed quickly its desperation.
(He also thought that he had finally, once and for all, COMPLETELY lost his mind because, WTF, he was listening to a talking onion, without even the slightest hint of a mushroom...😏...)
...But anyway...moving right along....
The keeper considered himself nothing if not fair and compassionate. He knew that the onion's condition was due to his own neglect.
He decided to do his level best at giving the once-forgotten and now desperate onion a second chance to prove itself.
First, for the sake of something he saw as art, he photographed the onion. Then, without shedding any tears, he surgically removed the onion's slimy, rotting flesh, planted the still-healthy remainder in a flowerpot, and watered it.
The End....
Wait.
The End....?
🤔
We shall see....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Epilogue:
As you can see, the onion, which was nurtured away from rotting, survived a while longer. It ultimately grew into 3 onions, all of which became part of a delightful French onion soup!
I wish I had a photograph of THAT!
Indumathi Arunan
Location: Bengaluru, India
About: This entry required us to find a photograph that meant something for us and write about it. I flipped through my gallery and looked at the photos. Hidden among so many pictures of people and places was a photograph of a wall. And it instantly took me back to the moment and the place.
Age: 24
I am running and hiding, chasing and being chased, anxious and terrified, and I’ve been holding my breath for two long years. My legs finally take me in front of a door with a poster saying I will now enter a “safe space for women and non-binary students”. I open the door and enter. The moment my foot crosses the threshold, I know. I just know in my bones that I will be safe here. I exhale two years’ worth of fear and trauma out of my body. It comes with tears as I sit on one of the many couches in the room. Someone sits opposite me working on a laptop. Did they notice me crying? I sit there until my pent-up emotions leave my body and marvel at the new feelings talking their place- feelings of safety and freedom. What a wondrous place this is, what a utopia, this 20X16 room. Nobody here is going to judge me. Nobody here is going to hurt me. I can sit here, as I please, I can exist as I am. And I am SAFE...I feel safe for the first time in seven hundred and thirty days. The four walls of the UMSU Women’s Room hug me so tenderly. The first, supporting a bookshelf with feminist books; the second, displaying a beautiful mural; the third, holding up couches, bean bags and blankets; and the fourth, providing a shelf of brochures (UMSU Women’s Department, Sexual Assault Helpline, Know your rights...), free contraception and menstrual products. People come and go through the door, curling up for a nap, taking a pad, working on their assignments- all strangers to each other but all feeling safe in the other’s presence. How I wish this feeling could exist outside that door, but the moment my foot crosses the threshold to the outside, I am running again.
Kaitlyn Burrows
Location: Brooklyn, NY
About: My focus has drastically changed over the past couple months, shifting from self-care and introspection to public protesting and mass education of racial oppression. I chose to submit two entries from the early days of journaling because upon re-reading them, they felt so faraway and yet the prompts and words still held relevancy and truth. I find collective rituals even more fiercely affecting now, and photo reflection even more important.
Age: 31
Man on the Mountain
Almost exactly 4 years ago, I snapped a picture of an elderly man perched up on a desolate peak on the edge of Breakneck Ridge in the Hudson Valley of New York. I was hiking with my then-boyfriend, now-husband, and unbeknownst to me, one-day-later fiance. This photograph now hangs in my Brooklyn apartment; not because it was associated with our engagement - it wasn’t - and not because it’s astonishing. In fact, it’s hardly the most breathtaking view I’ve witnessed, even on that somewhat modest mountain range. I love the picture because of the curiosity it still brings me from time to time when I linger a bit before walking past it for the hundredth time in a day.
I still remember rounding a western corner of massive, gray rocks - noone around - and looking past some brush to see this man, whom I guessed was in his late 70s, with loose strands of uncombed white hair, standing alone, gazing outward. The picture elicits so many questions for me, in the way I hope the experience brought so much resolve for the man. He stands on the edge, not too close, slightly leaned against a hiking stick on his right, backpack strapped to his back and snapped in around the front of his thin stomach and chest. I have no idea when he arrived, or how long he stood there. In my mind he was immortalized there and will live forever in that moment. He did not turn away from his purposeful gaze over the distant hudson river and tree-filled landscape for the duration of my passing through. I don’t know if he didn’t hear my boyfriend and I sneak past his seized territory, or if he chose to ignore us, but I’ve always maintained he was deep in the realms of his mind and wouldn’t have noticed a tractor paving through.
Where did he come from and what is he looking for? What are these spring leaves and chilled breeze giving him? An escape? A memory? A reason?
Sometimes after catching a glance of the photo, which now rests on the wall above a white, wooden cabinet I found at a local antique warehouse, I develop a story for the man. I make him real and wish him happiness. but other times I give him pain, sometimes my own. I let him know he’s not alone, but selfishly I’m using him as a reminder, that I am not.
He has now lived with me in three different apartments and been witness to some of my lightest and darkest days. The picture has moved, but he has not. Still standing close to the edge, staring into the abyss. No matter what angle you attempt when viewing the photo, you will not get a glimpse of his expression. Not just due to the physical distance between my subject and me, but his face is turned just so. Just so you know that he is older, he is male, and he is there. But the surroundings, what he’s viewing, that’s what
prompts the emotion. The emotions I have manipulated time and time again for my own satisfaction.
That man will never know that I was engaged the next day. He’ll never know that I stayed up all night a year later lying on a couch across from the photo, crying until my tear ducts dried. He’ll never know that I adopted a puppy who tore apart my bathroom and left a trail of ripped toilet paper below his frame. He’ll never know that I left pita’s under the broiler too long and had to desperately wave smoke away from the alarm that screeches above his head. He’ll never know when I squeeze shut my eyes and rest my heavy head in my hands because the news is too hard to hear or when I pour myself a glass of wine before the sun sets and dance around the kitchen to Sam Cooke records in fuzzy socks. He’ll never know that I too, walk alone sometimes, taking the outside in and feeling what it’s like to be with only my thoughts. And he’ll never know the curiosity I felt, deep in my stomach the day he came into my life, and sometimes light in my head as his image persists, but he was present for all of it.
Kathryn Kane
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
About: I'm a massage therapist, unable to work because my aging clients are at increased risk. This prompt was inspired by my dear friend, Earrach, who passed away from cancer a few years ago. He officiated at our wedding, his wife introduced us 26 years ago, but his death caused a rift between us, for reasons we do not understand.
Age: 54
Journal prompt for today is looking at a picture and responding to it in various ways. Already feeling sad this morning, so why not choose the last picture of Earrach. He was at our house for the last salon that we did, a couple months before he died. But just him, Diana dropped him off. He’s reading one of his pieces—what a lovely writer, and reader. I hear his voice in my head whenever I think of him. I think Nick and Shannon were there, Pavel and John. Lowry? Maybe. He’s gone too. No salons after this one, we moved to house concerts. I think about Earrach and/or Diana almost every day. One of those things that will never be ok, never be resolved. Nothing much I can do about it. When my brain spins it all around and tries to find a resolution, a way to talk to Diana, I realize that i am still so angry, so very angry. And I reached out to her multiple times, got no reply. So I am not optimistic that she would reply at all. Or if she did, it would be mean and dismissive. And Earrach died, so she would be able to justify that response—because why? That’s where the logic in my head breaks down. Knowing her, I think that anything around Earrach’s death probably has no excuse needed, no responsibility for resolution attached. Guilt free bitch. I wonder if she ever misses me. I am fairly sure that she will never reach out. Unless, as Andrew once said, something happened to Andrew. But I promised—easy promise—to spurn any overtures in those circumstances.
So—knowing what I do know now—I wish I had hugged him more. I wish I knew that he knew that we loved him very much. I wish that Jeren had been a better friend to all of us. I wish I could be back in that moment, here in my living room, looking across at where Earrach was sitting, hearing his voice.
Increasingly fearful that I will never get back to work. Glad to have finally started the knit along. Nervous about Arwen coming home. Also about the journey to go get her. Didn’t hear so much from her yesterday, hope she’s ok. Need to make masks for Erica’s family this morning and get those sent off.
Laurel Middelaer
Location: Vancouver, Canada
About: I have a beautiful canvas portrait of my daughter- she was killed by an impaired driver at age 4.
Age: 54
The canvas holds what I cannot
She’s mine
Angelic, wispy, curly locks
Haunting eyes transfixed in gaze
She’s mine
Beauty frozen still, captured, preserved
Stolen from me
Seasoned wisdom, the thoughtful soul
Speaks from the canvas
My jealous battle with the canvas
Straining, yearning to hear her voice
Memories of scent, touch, fierce connection and love
Are mine
The canvas surrenders, as I claim what it cannot hold
Her spirit is mine
Martina Clerici
Location: Tradate (VA), Italy
About: Living in Northern Italy, I found myself thrown in the Covid vortex quite early. I struggled with the influence media depictions of it had on my mood and the constant feeling of heaviness and uncertainty. Words I read and wrote helped me make sense of things and keep my balance. This prompt took me back to a time I can't remember but somehow feels familiar and true.
Age: 24
One of the pictures I like the most is a picture of me. I am probably around 3 years old, my eyes are closed (was I sleeping or just pretending?) and I am wearing no t-shirt, you can tell from my bare shoulders. I am sitting on a striped folding chair, thee kind you use when you go camping. A gust of wind blows, one of my pale blond curls (yes, at this point in my life I still have cute hair) covers my eyes and nose partially. I love that I have a very evident double chin, I hate that I wouldn’t feel the same about it if I had it now. But what I really love about this photograph is the sense of complete peace it gives me, the certain feeling that that moment was the most serene one I have experienced.
For as troubled as my soul may be now, I know there was a moment I was totally and utterly carefree, the wind blowing gently on my face and among the branches of maritime pines in a camping somewhere in Italy.
That moment is perfect; it is the closest thing to perfection I can get myself to picture: the idea of rest. And knowing I can always look for something similar gives me hope, I am constantly waiting for a fortuitous coincidence that, for a moment, lets me rest.
I’ve lost many pictures through the years and the ones I still have I know by heart. I always wish there were more that somehow I never saw, more testimonies of a past me that looks like a stranger.I wish there were more pictures of me through the years, that I didn’t waste so much time believing my appearance wasn’t for the camera, my not perfectly fixed hair, my too many pimples. Maybe they would help me trace back my story, see signs of time passing and me changing. Better, I wish there were pictures of me someone else took and never showed me, someone who loved me and felt the need to fix me in time, to leave me in that moment.
I wish there were more pictures like the one where I’m sleeping on a camping chair. Because I would spend hours, maybe days, looking for signs of me in that little girl, and for signs of her still present in me.
Nicki Judson
Location: Ashburton, New Zealand
About: I love to be creative, whether it be quilting, art or writing. I wrote my prompts from the deepest part of my heart and wasn't afraid to express my true feelings.
Age: 54
This photo makes me feel so happy because the people smiling back at me through the lens are so much in love and so happy in the moment.
It was my mum’s birthday and we had travelled three hours by public transport to get to this location. We walked down the pier and saw people swimming in the sea. I remember my mum talking to one gentleman as he gently swam back to shore. It was a beautiful sunny day. At a hotel by the shore a wedding was taking place on this day of love, the 14th February.
The two people in the photo are my mum, Flo and step-dad, Allan. I had asked them to pose for me, to look romantic. They laughed. My mum was talking and reached around Allan’s waist and said he was fading away. Allan replied that he hadn’t been this weight since his footy days. He had recently spent six days in hospital due to an infected finger from a piece of wood chip.
After the click they both kissed. Happy and in love. It would be our last holiday together, the three of us before everything started to go downhill with their health issues. It is a holiday I will always treasure and hold in my heart forever.
If I could ask my mum one thing since that special day it would be, how did you keep your love alive? How did you find such a wonderful man to spend your forever afters with and have unconditional love even in the last years of your life? You were such a loving couple, that no bond could break.
I fantasise that the moment you stepped off the pier your lives magically went back to normal after your return home. You would settle into the Lifestyle village earlier than expected. You would live happy, contented lives in your new home. You would both involve yourself with the activities that were provided. You would even travel the countryside again in your vintage car attending all the outings with your friends. You would live a great life and in the end you would both go to bed one night and not wake in the morning. Because a day without each other would be unbearable.
Bonus prompt: Write about the one photo you wish had been taken, if only that moment had been captured, but it wasn’t. Describe in living in colour or black/white.
I take a lot of photos, much like my mum and grandma did, so I never really miss any moments, but for me the one moment I would have loved to have captured would have been the last time my mum and I sat on her couch and simply were together. We ate popcorn, drank wine and watched a movie. I would have liked someone to have taken that moment and captured it as a vision keepsake forever, but because it is a moment I remember so vividly I can recall every single detail about that evening. The digital photo would stay on my computer, but the image of that moment will stay in my heart forever, much like the love between Flo and Allan.
Roelina Bosma
Location: Ontario, Canada
About: I have thousands of pictures and yet it's the moments I don't have photos for that stick in my memory the most.
Age: 37
The Picture I Wish I Had
Sunset at Zwicks park. My favourite place in a place I was trying to escape from. Me, Vince and Rob. My boyfriend and my best guy friend tossing a frisbee. Laughing at I don’t know what. Feeling young which to me is a novelty. I may have only been 19 but I had been expected to act like an adult for a long time already. Having fun felt like a luxury.
I can feel the joy of being in a place I loved with two people I loved. Before things got complicated. When I still believed this was our future. Me and Vince. Rob and Jess. Living on the same street raising our kids together. We all believed that and were excited about it.
I can see the bay bridge crossing over the water. Ducks and geese floating in the water. Fishermen on the pier. The sky a glorious shade of pink. After tossing the frisbee for a bit walking over to the pier because that was my favourite place in the park.
This became a summer or 2002 tradition. Me, Rob and Vince hanging out for a couple hours on a Friday night waiting for Jessie to get done work. Sometimes going over to Arby’s for curly fries afterwards. This was what I’d miss most when I went away to college.
Susana Hendrix
Location: Memphis, TN
About: I picked an image of my niece as I know I won't be seeing her for a very long time.
Age: 60
She came to us from Holland. The occasion was my mother’s funeral. To her, she was “Oma Laurie”.
I think my niece Birgit is a precious doll! It must be morning in this picture. She looks so sad and sleepy.
On the porch of my shotgun shack: My mom lived next door, in her very own shot gun shack.
Laurie was a great mom. I took her for granted. When we moved to Memphis, she took us to a march on April 3rd, 1969, the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King. She taught me to be an activist.
Birgit was to be a fashion model, posing for me. I did her make up and dressed her up in all my rock and roll slutty clothes. We took soooo many photos. She was the perfect doll- model. I love these photos. I wonder if she does?
Is she really sad in this photo? What is she thinking about? Is she wondering what her own mother was like? Her mother that left this world before Birgit had a chance to get to know her?
