Ultimately a
photograph looks like anyone except the person it represents.
Every photograph
is a certificate of presence.
—Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida
I want to photograph my grandfather—he
carried shadows with him: afternoon
shadows of war and intense energy finally woven like a hundred strings into
empty stares and forgetfulness. I
remember sweltering summers spent at the lake with him and my grandmother. The Oklahoma days were punctuated by catfish
catching, toad hunting and shockingly cold swims. Numerous photographs of those summers survive,
but without opening an album I can recall many of the images: they are
my memories. There are also—albiet fewer—images
of my grandfather when Alzheimer’s caught him.
His empty look tells me he is not there—he is his own index, his own wet
breath on a mirror. Despite his absence,
the photograph and his body become "a certificate of presence"—a legal document
verifying his ability to reflect light. He would often leave my grandmother notes on
the kitchen counter telling her where he’d gone—"Gone to the Boat Dock. Me." They were images of his "that-has-been." Now he has-been and is-no-more,
but his fragile index remains. Like
Barthes' Winter Garden photograph, I do not need to show a photograph of my grandfather to report who he was (closing
my eyes is enough), nor do I need to photograph him to remember who he
was. For me, this index becomes the "air (the expression, the look)" of his
face apart from his body, but inexplicably more important.
