I don’t know if any of you people out there are photographers? …Well, I guess, pretty much everyone is a photographer since we’ve moved into the age of the iPhone. But, more than that… A real photographer… Are you a photographer?
 
I don’t know that there’s really a difference between someone who considers themselves an actual photographer and someone who just grabs some great shot every now and then on their phone. I guess the big difference is the thought process that goes into the whole thing.
 
For me, I’ve been consciously taking photographs as far back as I can remember. I got my first decent 35mm camera when I was in junior high. Loved it. I’ve been taking photos ever since.
 
The thing is… And, this is going back in time… For those of you who are on the younger side of the picture, you may not even remember the days of film. But, back then, you bought it, you shot it, you developed it, then you had everything on a print backed up by a negative or a slide.
 
As a photographer, back in the film era, I shot a lot of slide film. Thus, I have tons and tons of slides stuck in those metal slide holder cases. Some I have had transferred to digital. Many, however, I have not. It’s expensive! And, if you have a high-end slide scanner, which you really need if you want to get a good transfer, it takes a lot of time—one slide at a time.
 
In any case, I had the idea that I needed to go through some of my cases of slides that have been lying around for years upon years.
 
The thing is, though slides are a one time great medium, I’ve encountered situations where years later I would decide to look at and/or do something with a group of slides I had shot in one country or another, and they had all turned black. The image was gone. That was so upsetting. More than likely base in a bad batch of developer or fixer or both.  I remember I lost all of the slides I had shot in Singapore’s Chinatown before it was completely dismantled. I was so upset.
 
Anyway, if you are a photographer. Or, even if you dabble in the art. Maybe you have taken a deep dive into photographing one specific individual, at a very specific period of time.
 
When I was going through my slides today, I came upon a situation where I had done just that. I had shoot maybe ten rolls of film, focused on the face of this one young lady who I was very close to at one of the times I was residing in Bangkok. 
 
Maybe you know how it is, when you’re young and in love and all enthralled with an individual.
 
But, looking at the slides, I had really done a deep portraiture of this woman. I took a lot of photographs.
 
The thing is, I had completely forgotten about shooting those shots. Seeing them, I remembered. But, the fact of the fact be told, I had not even thought of her for many a moon. The relationship went south soon after the day I took those pictures. But, there they are, time frozen.
 
I’ve done deep photographic explorations of people before and after that time frame, in Bangkok and elsewhere. The sad thing is, and the thought that came to mind while I was studying those slides is, the woman who meant the most to me in Bangkok, I never took a single picture of her. Wow… Hard realization.
 
Also, while looking at the photos of that girl and then moving onto some others that were in the batch, I realized that of all of these people, all of these young ladies that I’ve known and have photographed, the truth be told, in each case, I had arrived too late in their life. I got there too late. They had all already been damaged and scared and walked too far down the dark path leaving them only with LESS.
 
Sadly, all of the people I knew in Bangkok at that point in history are no longer with us. Drugs, AIDS, and just the forced reality of the passing hands of time. I’m the only one left remembering. I’m the only one with the photographs to prove that she, (and others), existed and that they and I lived in the same space of reality, at least for a moment.
 
Now, everything is digital. If it’s not in the cloud, it probably soon will be. Or, at least, hidden on some external hard drive or some ancient CD or DVD collecting dust and stuck in some drawer.
 
Actually feel it, touch it, photographs are an interesting commodity, even though they are quickly fading fast. Something to hold. Something to look at. Something to cause you to feel or re-feel. Something to make you remember a time forgotten.
 
But, what do they all mean? No one in my Life Circle remembers that girl but me. For anyone else to look at those slides, it would mean nothing.
 
It’s like sometimes when I go into a thrift shop or an antique store, I see piles of old family photos being sold. To those people, to that family, those photos really meant something. They charted their time in life. They meant something, until someone cared about them no more. Then, they get tossed in a donation bin and maybe bought by someone who will never have any idea of who those people truly were, only desiring a peek into a time gone past.
 
So ultimately, what do those photographs, those deep character studies, based in love, lust, art, or whatever truly equal? We’re here, we’re gone, and what do our feelings about your feelings mean to anyone else but ourselves?