This is the season of looking at life through the viewfinder. We take pictures of family graduations and college reunions, far-flung vacations and weekend holiday trips, distant seascapes and city views close at hand. When look through the viewfinder, hope to capture something of the essence of a moment or place, to secure the memory of a loved one or preserve a sense of what it was like to be there.
Which is why, two weeks ago, I found myself standing beside a farm pond in the hills of western Maryland, looking through the viewfinder of a video camera at my seven-year-old daughter Zoë and her four-year-old cousin Noah, supervised by their uncle Willis. They were fishing in the pond, and I was filming the action. The setting was idyllic and beautiful: morning sunlight, two kids, a couple of fishing poles, a tangle of worms and line. What could be better? And when the fish began to bite-Zoë and Noah each eventually landed several-it made no difference that the fish were smaller than their little hands. They were nonetheless enormously pleased at their accomplishment.
So was I, and I have it all on film. Reviewing the footage later that afternoon, I was particularly pleased with the close-up shots of Zoë's fingers and the worms. For an amateur, I had captured a photogenic moment rather well.
For most of us most of the time, the main point of taking photographs is to record those postcard views of life. We like our albums to be filled with images of life at its best: a picnic in the park, for example, on one of those summer days after a night storm has washed the grit from the streets and blown the humidity from the air, and the sun is warm and the breeze is soft and god is in her heaven and all is well with the world. Or a photo of an old friend lingering over cappuccino in a Left Bank bistro or standing alone on a windswept summit, or you sitting with your family at a holiday dinner or sharing a laugh with someone you love. In other words, what we hope to capture in the snapshots of our lives are those times when, either for a moment in your experience or forever in your mind, life is the best we can imagine.
But sometimes when we look through the viewfinder, we get not an image of perfection, we get the truth. That's certainly what the photographer Sallie Mann is looking to capture when she looks through the viewfinder. I was reminded of her work last week in a conversation with a renown First Amendment attorney, who told me about a threatened lawsuit against Sallie Mann and the Virginia Museum for a series of photographs she had shown during a presentation there. In fact, the photos in question weren't even part of her main presentation, but came from an encore showing of a few slide from one of her previous collections, titled "Immediate Family."
Perhaps some of you have seen Sallie Mann's book by the same title. It is a collection of black-and-white photographs of her three children, Emmett, Jessie, and Virginia. The photos were taken during warm weather over a period of seven years at their family home in rural southwestern Virginia. As befits the summer season, the children in the photographs often wear bathing suits or no clothes at all. These are not postcards to send to grandma and grandpa, however. The photographs document the moments most photographers and parents prefer not to see. We see images of anger, disappointment, shame, confusion, and insecurity--a visual chronicle of the crises of growing up.
One of the most compelling photographs, entitled "The Wet Bed," shows her daughter Virginia at the age of two, lying in bed fast asleep. Her arms are raised above her head like angel's wings, her legs stretched out in luxurious relaxation. The night is obviously hot; a chenille bedspread lies in a heap at the foot of the bed. Virginia is the picture of beautiful, trusting innocence. Yet there is fear in the photograph as well. The child on the bed fills only the central portion of the image. All around her lies the night, full of foreboding, and the pale stain that spreads from the child's body over the fitted sheet reminds us that the time will come for this child too when her instinctive trust in the world around her must be broken. The photographs of Sallie Mann remind us, in the words of one critic, that "children will suffer, no matter how lovingly they are brought up." What we see when we look at life through Sallie Mann's viewfinder, in other words, is not an image of pristine perfection, it's the often messy and sometimes painful truth about being a child and growing up.
The truth appears not only in Sallie Mann's viewfinder. This week an amateur video proved to be a decisive break in the horrific Central Park mob assault case, in which a roving gang of men sexually assaulted at least fifty women in the hours following the Puerto Rican Day parade on Fifth Avenue. For once, we have a case of sex, the truth, and videotape. The youngest assault victim identified to date is fourteen years old. In a letter to the Times about the mob melee in Central Park last weekend, one mother wrote:
The fear of violence against us is something that all women live with their entire lives. As the mother of three daughters and a survivor of rape, I have had to teach my daughters constantly to be aware of their own vulnerability. This is not an enjoyable task. The need for such an awareness frequently permeates what should be a relaxing walk in the park on a Sunday afternoon or a sense of freedom about growing up and being safe. Women are not safe, and last Sunday's rampage and violation are the perfect example of how women are viewed by many men in our society and culture.
That's not what I'd like to see as I look through the viewfinder on this Father's Day. The Central Park video shows part of the truth about the world our children will inherit. But so does my video of a sun-bathed morning by a pond in the country. Life is suffused with both promise and pain, both innocence and injustice, both happy endings and hopeless tragedies
That's the way life is: seldom picturesque and almost never perfect. Fortunately for us, most of our days are pretty ordinary. We get up in the morning and attend to the tasks our commitments have set for us. We debate the Senate race and deliberate about wallpaper for the bathroom. When we need a break from duty and responsibility, we watch our favorite movies and play well-worn games. Sometimes we feed our homeless neighbors and comfort our downcast friends. This may not be a picture one would put on a postcard and send to friends and family, but it feels a lot like real life.
But is real life what we want for ourselves and for our children? The truth about our lives and our world can be painful. Why not ignore the bad things in life and focus on the good things? Maybe we should all pack up and move to Maui or Montana and farm sheep or weave baskets or whatever. Or maybe not. But that's the quandary: Do we look through the viewfinder at whatever is there, the ugly as well as the beautiful, or do we ignore the truth and focus on those perfect moments?
If we take the latter approach, we will miss almost everything. Real life is always more complicated than a single snapshot can capture, and it's always messier than a postcard can ever illustrate. Life is whatever is there, in all its glory and tragedy, its sublime moments and sorrow-filled days. And between these polar extremes of experience lies most of life: the ordinary and normal and usual. But whether the moment is full of grief or ecstasy or neither, life is always best when we embrace it just as it is, without stepping out of the frame.
That's why, at this time of the year, I usually go off to the bookstore and buy a few volumes of poetry to read over the summer. At its best, poetry is not intended to render life neat and tidy, but to engage it fully, in its order as well as its disorder. In the images and symbols of a poem, we find the poet's picture of the wonder and the terror of living life fully. In her collection New and Selected Poems, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver includes a poem titled "A Dream of Trees."
There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees
A quiet house, some green and modest acres
A little way from every troubling town,
A little way from factories, schools, laments.
I would have time, I thought, and time to spare,
With only streams and birds for company,
To build out of my life a few wild stanzas.
And then it came to me, that so was death,
A little way away from everywhere.
There is a thing in me still dreams of trees.
But let it go. Homesick for moderation,
Half the world's artists shrink or fall away.
If any find solution, let him tell it.
Meanwhile I bend my heart toward lamentation
Where, as the times implore our true involvement,
The blades of every crisis point the way.
I would that it were not so, but so it is.
Who ever made music of a mild day?
Whether or not you and I ever put pen to paper, if we set out to see life as it really is, then we have the eye for truth which gives poetry its power. Each of us in our own way experiences a personal, visceral struggle with the truth about our lives. Each of us in our own way attempts to face existence on its own terms. What results, whether in verse or not, is the truth-a picture of life that is perfect not because it is flawless, but because it is real. Copyright AllSouls 2000.