Candid camera
A collection of authentic snaps in an old album (no filters, no posing) brings back memories of Darrel Bristow-Bovey’s childhood Christmases
Icame across an old photo album this week. A “photo album” is a kind of large-format, stiff-covered book in which people once preserved photographs, often precariously positioned behind transparent celluloid. “Photographs” were similar to the pictures that people take on their phones, but you could hold them in your hand.
There was something else different about the photographs in the album, and I couldn’t quite place what it was until I reached Christmas lunch, circa 1982. It’s a hot day in Durban – you can see the humidity in our hair and the crumpled paper serviettes, and the way the leaves of the delicious monster droop and the net curtains sag in the beer-coloured light. And Uncle Alan has unbuttoned the third button of his shirt. Uncle Alan wasn’t really my uncle and his wife Aunty Judy wasn’t really my aunt – I don’t think anyone called “uncle” or “aunty” by South African children in the 80s ever really were.
There are only five or six photos – it cost money to develop them – and the lighting is bad and no one looks their best. Look, there’s Uncle Dave smoking at the table and Aunty Marge trying to pull a cracker with herself, and I’m in the background apparently dressed like a cowboy in a plaid shirt and neckerchief with plastic six-shooters on my hips. What am I doing? I seem to be trying to eat my peas without using my hands. Am I trying to inhale them through my nose? There’s Aunty Yvonne fiddling with her wedding ring and staring out the window.
There’s always a lot to look at in those old photos, because – I finally realised as I turned the solid pages of the album – almost no one is looking at the camera. Sure, there are a couple of strained snaps where the camera operator has tried to corral his subjects: “Look here! Smile!
Say cauliflower cheese!” But even then not everyone has complied, and those who have are often caught in that uncomfortable transition between living life and putting on a face for the camera. Today, the photographer would glance down at the phone and say, “No, that one’s no good, another one!”, but back then we couldn’t see what was good and what was bad, so there we all are, oddly real and revealed.
Mostly people aren’t aware of the camera at all. They’re not posed or presenting, they’re talking or sulking or eating or smoking or thinking, or just wandering through the frame in the
“They are unphotogenic hand-grabs of unremarkable moments, weirdly framed. What treasures they are”
background with terrible posture. The turkey looks lopsided and mangled; those peas have lost their poise; someone has spilt gravy on the tablecloth. You couldn’t use those photos to impress anyone with what a perfect family you have, what a glorious day it is, how blessed you are: those photos haven’t been taken with anyone else’s eyes in mind, they are unphotogenic hand-grabs of unremarkable moments, weirdly framed and haphazard slivers of real life. They exist only as if to say, “This is what this particular moment looked like, on this particular day, if you happened to be standing exactly here”. What treasures they are.
Look – there’s my dad on his La-Z-Boy recliner after lunch, reading a cowboy novel. I’d forgotten that he crossed his legs that way, so that if you weren’t careful you could see right up the leg of his safari shorts. I’d forgotten how he frowned over
his reading and tilted back his head and forgot anyone else was in the room. Look, that’s my sister stabbing her new doll in the eyes with a fork. I don’t recognise that large lady in the floral dress coming out of the kitchen, and I don’t know what someone has just said, but she’s laughing so much her paper hat is falling off.
People say today’s kids are lucky that their lives are so thoroughly documented, but I wonder. We had fewer photographs but look at how much they captured. Today everything is curated and no one is alive – they’re too busy arranging themselves and their mouths and the props of their lives to demonstrate how happy they are. Everyone beams and hugs and angles their glass just so, without any of the grains and textures and embarrassments and disappointments and tiny triumphs of family life. I think today’s kids will look back at endless images of everyone smiling and posing and they’ll wish they could see again, one more time, what those people really looked like. W
Darrel BristowBovey is a columnist, travel writer, screenwriter and author.
His latest book, Finding Endurance (Jonathan Ball, R280), is on sale now. bristowbovey.com