Photographs

During a Semiotics course I took during my graduate work, I read an article about the relationship between photographs being a fetish and a symbol of death by Metz.   The article disturbed me at first because I love photography.  I’m not particularly good at it but I love to take pictures and see how they turn out. 

I was most intrigued with Metz’s correlation of death and the photograph.  The photograph is indexical as it refers to a specific point in time.  It is also an icon of the specific image and yet is also a symbol of what we were.  The photograph is like the tick on a clock.  We can’t go back.  We can try to recreate the photograph but we can’t.  We can never get that point in time back. 

Some cultures believe that by taking a photograph of someone, you are “stealing” their spirit.  This seems funny, but is it?  Maybe the spirit is in the photograph.  It is remembered for years to come, as long as someone sees the photograph.  In a sense, the photograph defies death, the symbol of the object being photographed lives on forever.  For instance, I grow roses.  When I see a perfect one, I will take a picture.  I know if I cut if and bring it inside, it will start to wither.  If I leave it on the plant, it will start to wither. If I run and get my family or neighbor to come and look at it, it won’t be the same rose that I saw minutes ago.  The sun and ultimately, time has effected it.  But, if I take a picture, I will forever have the rose the way it looked at that very moment.  The rose dies, but the picture continues to be a symbol to me that I cultivated a beautiful flower.

Do you have trouble throwing away photographs?  If so, why?  I have hundreds of old photos of people – my family and friends.  I have multiple copies, so when I’m cleaning out, I want to throw them out but I can’t do it.  Is it because the photograph is like having a piece of the person’s soul with you?  The photograph has captured the essence of the person and throwing it out is like tossing the person out.  I’ve asked other people about cleaning out photographs, they too see it as a taboo but don’t know exactly why.

So, maybe a photograph can become a fetish. The first definition of fetish is:  an inanimate object worshiped for its supposed magical powers or because it is considered to be inhabited by a spirit. (Mac desktop dictionary).  We take photographs to remember objects as they were.  We keep them in albums, on our computers, on our walls, our wallets, and ipods.  We keep the “spirit” with us, or at least the symbol of the spirit of the object with us.  A photograph keeps the spirit of the object alive and in a way defies death.