Numerous primitive and tribal cultures believe a person’s soul is stolen when they’re photographed. I wonder if a photograph shows a soul being drained.
I’m delving into mental and photographic snapshots of my 12 year expat experience for a colleague’s blog: one highlight, one lowlight. The lowlight will be hard to choose.
My five years in Asia in the ’90s would amount to great adventure for most people, yet the evidence clumps together in my least favorite albums.
Off-camera life losses — separation from family, friends, language, community, the death of my best friend, the theft of my puppy, you name I lost it during my first longterm stint abroad — are reflected on-camera. Stripped of my cosmopolitan composure. Confident clothing. Gleaming skin. Chocolate curls. Toothy smile. Layer by layer, country by country, year by year I deplete and erode.
There are some monstrous stunners here.
Sweaty and sun-damaged with unschooled fluffball haircut, captured in the gracious gardens of Raffles Hotel. I’d given up sunscreen, as well as hair products and all hope of finding a stylist who understood fine and curly.
On the Great Wall of China, scowling Westerner in unladylike Doc Martens and baggy seersucker shorts (the only ones in the shops, I swear!), surrounded by svelte Chinese girls in platform shoes cheerfully waving tour company flags.
Thankfully these days the likelihood of snapping a picturesque portrait has gone way up even if my background doesn’t always match me.
What do your bluest images depict and how do they reveal the soul’s resiliency?
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My goodness Anastasia. The photo that comes to mind immediately is of my husband and I posing at the 50th birthday party of an older friend five months after we lost our baby-girl at birth. I’m wearing a dress that in happier times had made me feel like Marilyn when I crossed a metro grid, giddy with youthful shame, and a smile that belied the look in my eyes. We were trying so hard to be good company, but as another friend had told me “the twinkle was gone from my eyes”.
But I’ve got that sparkle back, even though it may at times dim with the recollection of what we miss.
Sadness in a party dress. That’s a very poignant image Judith, thanks for sharing. My condolences.
I love the way this question asks a positive request from a sad perspective: ‘What do your bluest images depict and how do they reveal the soul’s resiliency?’ When something unsettling happens in our lives each one of us deals differently on the outside and yet our eyes are marked with that look of struggling through the pain or confusion that everyone can recognize as familiar in themselves. I would call this look ‘soul resiliency’.
Thanks a lot Silvana…it sometimes seems we don’t dwell much on dark days we’ve passed, but if and when we do — we gain a new appreciation for our own survival. Our ability to bounce back.
Anastasia, I think by now I can only surrender to the appreciation of the fact that your posts here keep being very resonant with my own thoughts and energy. Thank you, and here we go…
This I could not have written one year ago when at the time the grief from the recent passing of my mother was still painfully raw. I have a black and white photo of myself where I am hidden behind dark sunglasses while smiling to my surroundings. Only a few would know that this photo was shot in the afternoon of the actual day of the funeral, and the sheer exhaustion from the intensity of this life changing moment made me smile, while inside there was mostly numbness and too much grief to take in. So a black and white photo is my bluest image and for my own eyes today it still captures everything…
Sometimes a smile can create distance, a self-protective distance. At the same time the very same smile also depicts the wonderful resiliency of a soul undergoing a tough experience, as it did for me.
Thanks Kari, so sorry for your loss.
I love what you say about smiling to yourself. Like a little vote of confidence from somewhere inside that says “you’re going to get through this”.
Soul-stealing by photography – an interesting belief. Challenges my mind to imagine how this way of thinking could come about. So if you look at someone and subjectively perceive the soul and you look at a photo and feel the same – is that what they call stolen? A likeness made in the image of the person. Soulful copies.
Glad to see your likeness in another time and space, Anastasia. While the body may wear down, the soul wises up.
Thanks Bernd. The soul ‘wising up’, I like that.
The soul may not be taken by a photo, but it can be captured in a moment….
If eyes truly are the windows to the soul, perhaps the emotions captured in a photo and perceived by the viewer really do ‘steal’ something, by offering a glimpse into that person’s interior being, not just their exterior visage. Recognizing something universal, but also extremely personal.
I realize that I have almost no ‘blue’ images of myself. I seem to only capture (or maybe just keep) the highlights. Is this my visual way of editing my past, by only retaining the happy moments?
As always, your posts linger in my brain for days after I first read them – but in a soul-filling, not draining way.
True, Catherine. Even if we don’t know a person, we recognize “a look in the eye.”
I’d probably have edited all of these images from my history too, if only they didn’t completely represent adventures I want to remember for other reasons than how I was feeling.
This is a wonderful post, Anastasia. With my recent foray into photography I’ve been doing quite a few self portraits a la Frida Kahlo. I’ve tried to expand my expressions from the big smile most people recognise of “iconic” me to trying to capture tears, sadness, silliness and everything else in between. All of a sudden, the photos I find most fascinating to look at and share are the so-called blue ones. It’s so satisfying to see how much can be conveyed through one’s eyes, and there’s something of a validation to see more than just a mask of happiness. We have such a wide range of emotions that should all be celebrated in some way, even if they are challenging emotions.
Thanks so much for this post. Yet another sign from the universe that I am doing exactly what I should be doing.
xoxo
Thanks Sezin, somehow I missed responding to your comment!
A “mask of happiness” hides from us so much more than we think. I would love to exhibit your Kahlo-esque portraits at expat+HAREM if you’d be interested…
I would love that, thank you so much!
What’s the best way to show you what I’ve got at the moment?
You are so cool.
[...] my own brush with the weight of expat image expectation at a colleague’s blog this week by delving into the photos that correspond with a highlight and a lowlight of my expat experience. Despite previous and future [...]