I happened on a treasure trove of photos last weekend. No, it wasn’t in a box, though most of my analog memories are still stored in one down in the garage. Rather, this stash was hidden deep in my hard drive, marked with nonsensical file folder names such as KW-A.
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. As a writer, I desperately want to cast doubt on that, largely because I make a living writing words instead of letting pictures do all the heavy lifting.
It’s not that photos don’t have their place. It’s just a lot harder to write an alternative narrative to any particular episode in life when there is photographic evidence that shows you’re not really remembering things as they transpired.
Our memories are the Photoshop of our lives. Memories blur the truth around the edges, remove all the blemishes and recolor the past. We can even get so good at it that we can erase every detail of the original – the events as they actually happened, not how we want to remember them – and substitute them with a new image.
Of course, this retouching of the past has been going on throughout the ages. Painters were the Photoshop artists of earlier centuries. A classic example is pirate turned Bahamian Governor, Woodes Rogers. Look at any painting of Woodes and he was a pretty good looking guy. That’s because the painter wanted to get paid for his work, retouching the left side of the governor’s face, which had been partially shot off by a musket ball. No portrait painter in his right mind is going to paint his client with a half shot off jaw or a lady of the court with a pocked-marked face from a myriad of diseases.
Computers have made the artistry of retouching so much easier. Today we can remove the slightest of imperfections in a photo, eliminating a pimple, shaving some pounds off our waist or reducing the size of our astoundingly ample rumps. Truth is no longer in the eye of the beholder, but the skilled hands of a retouch artist who knows Photoshop inside and out.
I profess to being quite proficient in this art myself. I can retouch nearly anything and you’ll not be able to tell what was altered or adjusted. I have removed people in their entirety from a photo, or added a new person who wasn’t even there. A giant shark eating cruise ship? Kid’s stuff!
And yet, there are photos I choose not to retouch, if for no other reason than the fact that they do tell a truth, sometimes a difficult truth to see, one that has been reshaped and retold to the point where the I actually believe it.
Case in point. The photo to your right. It was shot in St. Augustine in 2008. While I wanted to think things were fine at the time, I was obviously looking for a way out from a miserable relationship. Literally.
I didn’t really think much of the photo at the time. As with all memories, I Photoshopped the event, believing that I was distracted by a passing ship while standing next to that impenetrable fortress, and no, I’m not talking about the Castillo in the background.
If only had I known now what I didn’t know then. I still didn’t even know it now, until my lovely Kat saw the photo and said, “Well there’s two people looking for a way out.”
The only way out at the time, unfortunately, was over the edge of the impossible fortress, and this time I’m talking about the one in the background.
I didn’t even know I needed an escape route at the time, but now that I look at it from the perspective of a healed individual who actually knows what a nurturing, loving relationship is, I can readily see that I was way off course back in the day.
Ah, the wonders of Photoshop. Memories are so fun at twisting reality, letting us think that events that transpired actually happened the way we want to remember them.
The discovery of more long lost photos reminded me of this. They weren’t of Florida, but of my time just before I lost my senses and moved there. I was still in Port Orchard, the summer of 2003, doing something that I absolutely love to do, go pirating.
The photos shot then have the very same expression on my face as the one above. I am checked out, stuck in neutral, coasting, disengaged. I don’t look happy or sad. I look like I am enduring life, not living it.
I apparently was just going through the motions as I was in Florida. I was a blank canvas and all the Photoshopping in the world couldn’t fix it.
I only wish I was able to see the signs as clearly back then. I don’t think those closest to me could tell something was horribly wrong. Perhaps they didn’t want to look that close or that I wouldn’t believe them if they pointed it out.
I can’t get away with that now. Photoshopping my life these days is a pointless exercise, as Kat can tell the slightest change in my demeanor, reminding me all too well that I carry all my emotions in my face: the happy, the sad, the thoughtful and the checked out. I can’t pull a fast one over on her as she quickly learned how to use the “Undo” tool and take me back a step or two to see what’s wrong with this picture.
I wish I was able to do that on my own. I would have never had to spend all that time retouching my life so that I could bare to look at it, even if it was with distanced eyes that wished things were different than they really were.
In the Emerald City, glad that I can’t find the rose-colored filter in my gadget bag,
– Robb