17 September: Boreham on Photography

The Ethics of Photography
We mark today the anniversary of the death of William Fox Talbot, who, never dreaming of the scientific and cinematographic ramifications to which his invention would lead, taught us the art of photography. The occasion suggests an intriguing inquiry, especially at this time of year. In the course of that domestic eruption known as Spring cleaning, no problem is more poignant or perplexing than the problem presented by the household collection of photographs. We seem to need an asylum for these pathetic mementoes—a place where the unhappy specimens, which we are loth to destroy, and yet which are in peril of becoming ridiculous with the passage of time, can be handled reverently and carefully housed. People come into our lives; we become attached to them and value their friendship; we exchange photographs with them; and, as soon as we have done so, the inevitable happens. The portraits get hopelessly out of date; and, in a few years, they look so absurdly archaic as to compel a burst of laughter.

In the course of Spring cleaning, we resolve that we will one day destroy a lot of them. But we seldom do. It would seem like a betrayal of old confidences, an outrage upon sentiment, a heartless act of vandalism, or even sacrilege.

Pictures That Acquire Sudden Value
Photographs have a way, at times, of asserting their worth and insisting on being appraised at their true value. Our reference to polar exploration recalls the stirring chapter in which Sir Ernest Shackleton tells of the loss of the ship among the ice floes. In that graphic record he describes an incident that must have set all his readers thinking. In the grip of the ice, the "Endurance" had been smashed to splinters, and the entire party was out on a frozen sea at the mercy of the pitiless elements. Shackleton came to the conclusion that their best chance of sighting land lay in marching to the opposite extremity of the floe. He thereupon ordered his men to reduce their personal luggage to two pounds weight each. For the next few hours every man was busy in sorting out his belongings—the treasures that he had saved from the ill-fated trip. It was a heart-breaking business. Men stole gloomily away and dug little graves in the snow, to which they committed books, letters, and various knick-knacks of sentimental value. And, when the final decision had to be made, they threw away their little hoards of golden sovereigns and kept the photographs of their sweethearts and wives.

Moreover, photographs, like fashions, are capable of strange revivals. Quite suddenly, they acquire new interest and value. Somebody whom we knew years ago becomes famous—or dies. It flashes upon us that we have his photo. But it is not there. At some Spring cleaning we must have glanced at the creased and faded portrait, and, without pausing to allow memory to do her vivid work, we must have tossed it out and perhaps, burned it. The treachery strikes us now as unpardonably base. The same perplexity arises, sooner or later, in relation to the portraits on our walls. The faces that look down upon us in our homes are faces that transport our minds to remote places and to distant days. With the arrival of each Spring, there arises a temptation to remove this portrait from the wall altogether, to supersede that one, and to relegate a third to a dim and distant corner. It is an uncomfortable problem.

To Know All Is To Pardon All
Then again, have photographs no ethical or spiritual value? Is there a man living who has not, at some time, felt rebuked by eyes that looked down from the wall? We feel, in relation to the photographs around the room, as Tennyson felt in relation to the spirits of those whom he had loved long since and lost awhile. It is good to feel that those who have passed from us are not, in reality, far from us. And yet—

"Do we indeed desire the dead
Should still be near us at our side?
Is there no baseness we would hide?
No inner vileness that we dread?

Shall he for whose applause I strove,
I had such reverence for his blame,
See with clear eye some hidden shame
And I be lessen'd in his love?"

Who has not been conscious of a similar feeling under the searching glances of the eyes upon the wall? They seem at times to pierce our very souls.

Tennyson came at length to the comfortable assurance that the shrinking fear with which he thought of his dead friends was not justified. For, he reflected, those who have gone out of the dusk into the daylight have gained, not only a loftier purify, but a larger charity.

"I wrong the grave with fears untrue:
Shall love be blamed for want of faith?
There must be wisdom with great Death:
The dead shall look me thro' and thro'.

Be near us when we climb or fall:
Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours
With larger, other eyes than ours,
To make allowance for us all."

It is pleasant to transfer that thought to the photographs around the room. They hang there all day and every day; they hear all that we say and see all that we do; those quiet eyes seem to read us through and through. Yet if, on the one hand, they see more in these secret souls of ours to blame, it is possible that they see more to pity. The judgments that we most dread are the judgments of those who only partly understand. The drunkard shrinks from the eyes of those who, beholding their debauchery, know nothing of his temptation. There is something strangely comforting and inspiring in the clear eyes of those who see, not a part only, but the whole.

F W Boreham

Image: William Fox Talbot