Week 34 - Past Future Photo

Past Future Photo

Matthew Ryan Fischer

The old man behind the counter was talking to me. Why do they always talk to me? Don’t they know better? I’m not their friend. I don’t look them in the eye or engage them. I barely ask any questions. And yet they always want to talk to me. It’s because of the past. It’s because I’m looking at their past and so they think I must be interested.

“You a photographer? Not many people using the cameras like that one anymore.”

He was looking at my Polaroid. Old technology. Outdated. More obscure every day. A relic. Just like the man behind the counter. Just like me. Maybe that’s why I don’t want to talk to them. They all look like me.

“I don’t have any film, but I can make some calls to some people that might. If you’re looking, that is. Some people use the new stuff, but I hear it’s not really the same.”

I nod and mumble a response. He’s not sure what I just said. I’m not sure what I said. Maybe it will be enough to make him leave me alone.

“I watched a documentary about that. How they shut the plant down…”

He was at it again. Apparently I wasn’t going to be so lucky.

“…Everybody went digital. It was too easy. There was no cost to it. You can capture everything with digital. No film, no time to develop. Point and click. Everyone thinks they’re a photographer now.”

I nod in agreement. Everybody does. Including myself. I’m not about to tell him that though. He probably thinks I’m some artist, sticking with the old cameras because it adds warmth or authenticity or something like that. Maybe he’ll give me a discount or something.

“You don’t want the film, maybe you want a different camera? I got a lot of other models in the back, in boxes and such. Not enough room out here for them all. What is it you’re after?”

“A moment.”

“A what?”

“The perfect moment... I’m a moment thief.” He looks at me startled. He probably couldn’t hear me right and thinks I’m about to rob him.

“A what?”

“A moment thief. I steal moments. Instantly.”

I point the Polaroid and steal a moment from him. He smiles and tries to strike a pose, a moment too late. The best photos are spontaneous photos. No staging. That’s the only way to get the real person.

“They say that people were afraid of cameras at first. Magic and all that. Thought it would steal a man’s soul. They say that there are islands and tribes in the jungle that still believe that.”

“Yeah, no. That’s just some made up nonsense.”

“I don’t know. I read about that.”

“It’s an urban myth. Everybody heard it from somebody or read about it in some book. The ignorant keep it alive because nobody can prove or disprove it and they’re sure they heard it somewhere. Trust me, nobody ever really thought that.”

“Well, you might be right... Who’s to say?”

Yeah, I know I’m right you inbred idiot. But I keep that thought to myself.

“You got any old photos?”

“Old photos?”

“Yeah like when a person dies or drops off some photo albums? Or maybe left over in a shoebox? Old photos.”

“I know what you mean.” He was annoyed with me. Good. I made him annoyed. He finally realized he had feelings I could hurt and that I was an annoying prick. “I know, I know. I get boxes of junk. Back shelf in the corner near the curtain. None of them are sorted. You can rummage through and take what you like. Not much value to that sort of thing. Sad really. Somebody dies and nobody left to take the pictures. No family. No one to remember...”

I start to walk away. He wants to say more. He wants to tell me about the dead and how there’s honor there. How life is worth living and the dead should be remembered. How it’s not fair that we all rot and turn to dust and get forgotten. He wants to tell me. How do I know? Because they all want to tell me these things. Garage sales, junk shops, second hand stores. Every time I start looking at something old, people want to tell me about how it has meaning. What they mean is that they want their existence to have meaning. I can’t smile and pretend that it does. It’s better to walk away than to listen. It’s better that they see the back of my head than the pity of indifference in my eyes.

“Everybody should be remembered, dontcha think?” I grunt at him. I don’t want to see his eyes. I’m afraid what I might find in them if I look. “Especially the children. Those are the worst. Looking at the young when they’re no longer there.”

I head to the back of the room. On the bottom shelf are a row of photo albums, picture frames and a couple of boxes of loose photographs. Right where he said they’d be. I don’t know why. It’s just junk. He can’t sell this stuff. It should have just been thrown out. But he was too sentimental. I tell myself he’s a fool. But then again I’m the one back here looking at them. So what does that make me? I tell myself that I’m an investigator, but I know the truth.

One thing the old man was right about – it’s hard to look at dead children. I don’t know why that should be worse, but it is. Everyone in the pictures is dead now. Young, old, happy, sad. All dead. Long gone and forgotten. Nobody knows there name. And it wouldn’t matter if they did.

Sometimes I bring an old fountain pen and write names or dates or locations on the back of the photos. Someone else someday will find these and think they mean something that they don’t. And that person will never know. I will have invented history. Not that it will mean much. But it will mean something. Steal a moment from someone, give someone else something new. Maybe some great artist someday will make some great genealogical masterpiece and my nonsense will be included. And maybe I’ll be long dead and will never know. Still, I smile at my work. From this moment on, I will have altered the world.

I take the photo out of my wallet. Like I always do. The photo of the solider.  I stare and him and he stares at me, with his cold dead eyes. He looks hollow inside. A man going off to war, already dead inside. A man without a soul. A man already dead.

I set my photo on the floor, so I can look at it while I flip past the faces. The blank faces. What am I hoping to find? A match? A relative? Someone who might know something or someone like my dear soldier. What are the odds? Where has he been? Who has he seen? The soldier won’t tell me. But maybe the photographs can.

I find myself looking at the pictures more and more. It seems like every day now. I seek them out. I mix and match and paint myself a tapestry. I draw lines of connection and inference. I build a timeline. The more I find, the more I am sure there are others out there. There in the past, locked away. Moments in time. Stolen little moments, waiting to be discovered and filled with meaning.

I visit more stores. I visit the estate sales, the shops and funerals. The more I look for them, the more I find. The faces – there are so many faces. They blur together and all become one. Am I sure I’m not just seeing things? Imagining things? All in one.

I can’t help myself. I have to look. I have to find them. This is my grand genealogical art institute. The museum of life. The museum of history. The lost artifacts that no one knows, that no one is looking for. I am the only one. It gives me purpose. It spurs me on. The more I find the more I know are out there. The more I look, the more they become.

Am I infinite? Am I everyone?

I drive myself mad with the questions.

The solider stares back at me. His eyes are gone. Lost to age and cheap paper and bad film and bad developments. I tell myself I can still see his eyes. What secret does he hide? What does he know? Did he know he was going to die? Did he know where he was going? Did he know where he had been? He looks calm. Morose. Something inside him was dead already. The photograph didn’t steal his soul. He already had none.

I tell myself these things. I tell myself I can see what can’t be seen.

His crooked mouth hides a smile. Of knowledge? Wisdom? Or maybe he just had a crooked smiled.

“That your grandfather? Great-grandfather?”

The old man is behind me. Nobody invited him here. Nobody asked him to come and spy on me and see what I was doing. Why was he here? Nosy old prick.

“No...”

“It looks just like you.”

“Funny. It sort of does, doesn’t it.”

“Just like you.”

I keep finding them. The past. Or maybe the future. Just like me. All in one. Am I infinite or am I crazy? Warriors, killers, the broken, the ugly, the mean… what is it that the future holds for me? What past is this that I am to become?

The soldier smiles and keeps his secrets. He won’t tell anyone. But someday that crooked smile and those empty eyes won’t just be his anymore. Someday, when I am over and he has just begun.