A picture is worth a thousand words, is a phrase that indicates the complexities and detailed analysis that one can get from a well-taken picture. Every second, lots of photographs are taken around the world—according to Geoffrey Batchen Americans alone take about 550 snapshots per second (8). Photography is one of the greatest inventions in modern history, which made possible to capture the moment that people want to remember. As technologies developed, quality of photography has been improved and types of equipments became diversified. However, one fact that has not been changed, in all ages, people took photographs to store their memories. Historically, daguerreotype, the first portable sized photograph, fulfilled people’s possession of their own images. Whether you wish or not, your memory will fade. Even if you think that you will remember all of the details of a time and place, your memory will become blurry. This is why people think archiving memories are important, not just in their mind but also in photographs to pass those moments on to their families, friends and to future generations.
Recently, I was on a cruise during Thanksgiving holiday for the first time in my life. While I was on the cruise ship, I realized that a lot of people were obsessed with taking photographs of themselves with backdrops and props. Since I was not culturally familiar with cruise vacation, I was wondering why people were taking photographs throughout the period of the cruise. A cruise is a good opportunity for people to get away from reality and enjoy the glorious weather and the relaxed atmosphere of the ship sailing away into the ocean with their loved ones. Also a cruise is a perfect time for people who want to take hundreds of pictures of them. During five days of the cruise, I was astonished by people’s obsession with taking photographs. After watching people who were taking cruise photographs for five days, I could think of three reasons for people’s obsession with photographs on a cruise. The reasons are 1) people want to retain memories with friends, spouse, family, etc., 2) people use cruise photographs to show off their social status, and 3) people are exposed to high-commercialism of consuming photographs. In this paper, I would like to discuss about the psychology of taking pictures of special events and address why people are obsessed with taking pictures of special events by analyzing cruise photographs.
Someone has said that Forgetting is a form of death but the irony is that it is unstoppable and also a necessary process for the further learning. The memories are very relevant in human life and photographs help us in keeping these past memories intact. There are thousands of moments in a person’s life to celebrate, remember and even to grief and every moment can be preserved with the help of photography. The old time can not come back again but People can remember various unforgettable moments from their past by seeing these photographs, live those past moments while remaining in the present and this is the biggest advantage of the photography. Photographs are said to be the vehicles of the memory and one can visit the history by riding on this vehicle. The photography helps in recalling the past memorable events from the history. Apart from this, the photographs are good evidence and no one can deny the tales of these photographs. These photographs produce a good evidence of the past religious, social, and political occurring and teach the youngsters about the efforts done by their elders to sustain and in the making of the society and the nation.
Marita Sturken in the book, Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, The Aids Epidemic, and The Politics of Remembering, said “No object is more equated with memory than the camera image, in particular the photograph. Memory appears to reside within the photographic image, to tell its story in response to our gazeYet memory does not reside in a photograph or in any camera image, so much as it is produced by it. The camera image is a technology of memory, a mechanism through which one can construct the past and situate it in the present. Images have the capacity to create, interfere with, and trouble the memories we hold as individuals and as a nation. They can lend shape to histories and personal stories, often providing the material evidence on which claims of truth are based, yet they also posses the capacity to capture the unattainable" .
Family photography is very popular part of the photography from the beginning and people have been taking the photographs of their near and dear ones from the time, they came to know about the use of camera. The family photographs helps in making good bonds among the family members and also they help in making good relations between different generations. When the photographs of previous generations are transferred to the next generation, they are not merely photographs but they carry the history of the family, different tales about their forefathers, the values and the traditions of the family. When the family members of new generation see the photographs, they feel the affection and attachment with their grandparents thus we can say the family photographs as an emotional investment devices. When Robert Barthes finds a photograph of his mother, he became joyful and he writes in Camera Lucida “Is history not simply that time when we were not born? I could read my non existence in the clothes my mother had worn before I can remember her. There is a kind of stupefaction in seeing a familiar being dressed differently”. The photographs allow seeing an individual that how his grandfather used to look when he was five years old or how he used to look in his twenties. It is not easy to find a person who does not have photographs of his or her family members. There are many people who take the services of professionals for preserving the photographs of their family members and friends though people also take photographs themselves since today the cameras are very user friendly with advanced technology.
Family photos are usually found depicting the happy moments of the life. It is hard to find the photos in which someone is wiping the floor but it is not difficult to find the photographs of family get-together or any ceremony related to the family members. Some scholars opine that there is a similarity in the family photographs and almost all the family albums carry the photos of similar moments even after the photos and moments belong to the different families. Family photographs are different from the other photographs due to a number of reasons. These photographs are very specific, confined and should be taken into special environments. Bourdieu comments on this trend in his book photography: a middle brow art, he writes “While everything would lead one to expect that this activity, which has no traditions and makes no demands, would be delivered over to the anarchy of individual improvization, it appears that there is nothing more Regulated and conventional than photographic practice and amateur photographs”. The family photographs are usually seen by the family members, relatives and close friends and they are very important for these people however if a neutral person sees these photographs, he or she may not like them or may find various faults in the pictures.
The Photographs allow the individuals, groups and communities to provide information to other people, groups and communities about their memorable moments. A large number of People have a tendency to show off and they often show the pictures of their foreign tours and cruise voyages. The pictures of such tours are displayed very often to flaunt the wellness and also these photographs are used as status symbol. After the invention of the social sites like Orkut and Facebook, this tendency of flaunting the photographs has touched new heights. The users of these social sites keep a number of photographs and in their profiles that depicts the story of various occasions. Since the photographs informs a lot themselves, people need not to tell everybody, available in the contact list about their prosperity but the viewer himself comes to know about the prosperity of the person by seeing the photographs.
Since the cruise voyages are very costly affair and still not affordable by a large number of people, such voyages are considered as status symbol and this is the reason why Pictures of cruise voyages and the foreign tours are very commonly displayed by people on several platforms like various social sites. People have a tendency to show these pictures even in the offices to their colleagues. Photography this way also provides the people various reasons to cheer up, celebrate their happiness and share the same with their near and dear ones. The concept of Commercial photography is not new, Photographs are very valuable assets and People have been using photography and photographs to make money by a number of ways. In ancient times, when the cameras were not easily available, people used to take the help of professionals in capturing the photographs of their family members and friends. People on different occasions captured these pictures and compiled them in albums to see and show to other people. Today, the commercial photography is in highly developed stage and professional photographers are earning very good amount of money by several methods, rendering their services and skills. Even today, the people hire professional photographers at different occasions or in a family ceremony. The photography provides the employment to a large number of people in different forms.
It is very common to find the professional photographers at the tourist spots. The companies that organize the cruise voyages also keep professional photographers with them. These professional photographers capture the different moments of the voyagers or the tourists and provide these photographs at higher rates. People also do not hesitate in paying for the pictures of these unforgettable moments. Commercialization of the photography has contributed to make this field better and technically advanced. The quality and the capacity of the cameras are thousands times better in today’s times than it was in the beginning .
Photography has touched every aspect of a human life and in various forms. Apart from the family photography and the commercialized tourist photography, the photography has helped a lot in the making of the modern society. The photography has helped us in recalling various important events from the history. It is not wrong to say that in the absence of the photography we would have not able to remember various unforgettable historical moments which decided our future. It has helped in reducing the crime rate in the society and also in the good governance. No one can deny the role of the media in the making of the society but Media can not imagine its existence without the use of cameras. The invention of photography is indeed one of the greatest inventions of humans.
Works Cited
Bærenholdt, Jørgen Ole. Performing tourist places. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2004. 105-107.
Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart. Photographs objects histories: on the materiality of images. London: Routledge., 2004. 42-43.
Jay, Bill. "Past Perfect." The British Journal of Photography (1982).
Pierre Bourdieu and Shaun Whiteside. Photography: A Middle-Brow Art. California: Stanford University Press, 1965. 7.
Rose, Gillian. Doing family photography: the domestic, the public and the politics of sentiment. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2010. 126.
Sturke, Marita. Tangled memories: the Vietnam War, the AIDS epidemic, and the politics of Remembering. London: University of California Press, 1997. 19.
Wells, Liz. Photography: a critical introduction. New York: Routledge, 1996. 208-215.
