Memorizing Family
The past few days, I’ve been looking at a bunch of family photos on Instagram. It is due to the Eid season. People are going back to their hometown to meet and visit their family. Even for those who don’t do that will still somehow edited themselves to their family photos. Looking at those photos reminds me of a quote I read in On Photography (1977):
“Cameras go with family life.” — Susan Sontag
Moments like those are sacred to families. Just like births, graduations, weddings, even funerals. Most people capture those moments and even put it on frames. They will go extra miles to make sure the memory is captured in the best way possible. Especially now we have easier access to cameras. They are a part of our phones. ((Not-so) funny story, there was a photo session during the Eid celebration and when someone wants to take a picture with a non-iPhone camera, someone else shouted “Eh, itu kameranya pake yang iPhone dong biar bagus,”. I gasped and gagged.).
I guess, capturing the perfect picture of the family is quite ironic since they are mostly the root cause of our traumas. It becomes an act of self-gaslight to remind how performative we are in the family. For these kind of pictures, we set aside the spouse and in-laws frictions, the sibling rivalry, or even the mommy/daddy issues. The picture becomes a sort-of false memory. It is an expectation, a serenity we want to believe is or was happening.
Thus, with those pictures we will definitely get the sense of nostalgia. We will recall back the phase of life we were in. Was the picture taken when everything was okay? Was the photo captured when things were not as beautiful as the smiles in it? Others won’t know, but we will. We will memorize family privately, because they are such a sacred thing.
