Found

Found

My Grandparents Allen, Wedding Day

This photograph dates to 1899 and shows my Grandfather and Grandmother Allen (Julius Henry Allen, Lillian Eremine McKinley) on their wedding day. Showing front and back of the card photograph. The notes were made by Lucille Allen

Back of photograph. No month/day has been determined for their 1899 marriage.

This was the second marriage for Julius. His first wife, Josephine Farmer (also known as Mary Josephine and Josie) died 11 May 1897.

Wondering why photographs of people are so precious

I graduated from Hopkins with a Ph.D. in Byzantine art and architecture and then turned my research efforts to the history of photography. On the face of it, that is a radical career jump. But Byzantium, in particular the Byzantine icon and the justifications for the icon intrigued me. The proper (working) icon had to bear a resemblance to the saint represented and had to be made "in the right way." Then there was a special kind of icon that was not made by human hands (acheiropoieta), images that miraculously appeared (the earliest example may have been the Veil of Veronica, an imprint of the face of Jesus left when Veronica used her veil to blot away the sweat on the face during the march to Golgatha). The icon, a representation rather than an idol, seemed to enjoy a special identity with the person represented. 

I wondered if any post-Byzantine European civilization shared a belief in this very powerful kind of image and one day it hit me that the general attitude was not so different from popular attitudes toward photographs. A photograph's resemblance to the subject is pretty obvious. Being made in the right way is understandable to each of us who had a roll of film returned with negatives that were so bad that the processor claimed that nothing could be printed (for the younger, this refers to ancient picture-making process that involved something called film). It was the identity characteristic that seemed most telling to me. We treat certain photographic images (especially portraits) as treasured objects precisely because they bear such a resemblance to a person. 

Were I to take from you a portrait of someone dear to you and rip it apart, you would react with sadness and fury. Remember, it is nothing more than a piece of paper with tones covering it. But what I have I really done in your eyes? I have destroyed a precious object that was precious precisely because it bore a resemblance of somebody important to you. On the other hand, I have seen people tear apart a photograph when they experience deep anger towards the person "in" the photograph. (This seems to happen most often when a relationship goes sour). 

I pick up snapshots at flea markets. I have no idea where the snapshots were made or who they represent. Finding a snapshot that has been torn to remove a figure that originally stood next to the figure that was kept, is an assault on history. For whatever reason, the removed figure should never have been standing next to the preserved figure (and by the way, we have some examples of the delicate surface of daguerreotypes having been rubbed to effect the same purpose).

While only in spiritualists circles do images seem to appear magically, the notion that photographs are the result of a mechanical process, an image that is not the work of a person but of a machine, was the basis of a very long prejudice against the idea that photographs could be works of art. The maker of a photograph knows how to make the camera work and has little control over how the picture looks (a common attitude no matter how naïve). 

The analogy has not escaped some religious writing

Icons Unite: photographs, films, videos of people we love can make them seem very close. The icons can make us feel very close to Christ and the saints - and this feeling of closeness is no illusion.... 

The analogy between the photograph and the icon allowed me to see how a believer in the identity between an image and the thing represented embodies attitudes that can easily be seen as expressions of faith, the one clearly a religious belief and the other a fuzzy material faith or belief. 

I was able to look again at the Byzantine icon with a heightened awareness of just how precious pictures can be.

While thinking of the Osama photographs

Photographs reveal more than the subject. A photograph always speaks of the intention of the maker or the intention of the subject cooperating with the maker. Alexander Gardner’s Civil War “What Do I Want, John Henry?” speaks volumes on the social attitudes within the Army of Liberation . The decision of Roy Stryker to widely release only one image of the Dorothea Lange Migrant Mother series tells us about a sway from reportage to poignancy. The several views of Che talk to us about the cooperation of the photographer in establishing the fame of the hunters (everybody gets his chance).

So, I do not want so much to see the Osama bin Laden death photographs as I would like to see them and think about what they mean, to see if I recognize an emotion or an illusion. Or maybe myself.

But I am also content to wait for the release. After all, that will not be long. I can see them in the grocery store checkout next week.

James Agee On The Limits of Text