Go Fish

Part 1

The photographer captured an image that had something unexplainable about it. There was nothing special about the people (two of them) who were the focus of the camera’s eye. They were neither attractive nor unattractive and were in an outdoor space that had nothing spectacular about it. However, the photograph took on meanings nobody at the time could define. Maybe if we back up and take this step by step we can figure out what makes the people and the place so unique, so inexplicable. Inexplicable because it had survived threats to its existence. It was easy enough to identify the persons (nothing special, as already noted), and because they were ordinary, the place ordinary, the unusual nature lay beyond the white frame of the photo, in its sheer refusal to fall by the wayside and be chucked into a wastebasket.

This is where I might be able to sort some things out, since I know a little about photography, having taken a couple of college courses in it. 

Let’s start with the easiest thing: the basic description. The people in the photograph are a small child not yet fully steady on its feet. Given the fact that the baby appears - I’m saying appears - to be wearing a skirt and bonnet, I’m going to assume this is a little girl. What strikes me as unexplainable is the child’s face, as she gazes at something off to her left. She is wearing a quite unpleasant scowl, eyes narrowed, brow furrowed, mouth puckered as if she’s about to cry. The garments look like they might be white, but yellow is also possible. More on them later.

To the left of the child is a man, kneeling or otherwise with his body close to the ground, as even as possible with her height. As possible, I’m saying. He isn’t sitting, but rather is leaning in to provide support for the tyke’s uncertain limbs. Somehow he manages to sustain in his right hand (his right arm is encircling the baby, keeping her back steady) a fishing pole. From his left hand a fish dangles. It’s a respectable size, give how small the baby who caught it is.

And yes, I’m sure she caught it, with a little help from the man. The look of sheer joy and pride and love can only be that of a father. This relationship is not verifiable in the physical resemblance of the two people; only in the man’s body language and gleaming eyes am I able to identify the father-daughter kinship.

The place is, as has also been noted, nondescript. There are some furrowed granite boulders as backdrop, like strata of rain clouds. Like with the human elements, the inanimate portion is not all that detailed. The photo looks old and is not a little grainy. What I cannot explain, despite my studies, is makes it more than an everyday scene. Keeping in mind that the photographer is always outside what is being photographed, on this occasion too we can step back to find the unforgettable, the part that the eye behind the lens is trying to reproduce. (It gets complicated when we try to locate what a photo really contains.

Perhaps the unexplainable lies not only in the fact that nobody threw the old snapshot away, but also in the way it truly is a ‘snap shot’, something recorded on film long before digital existed, not fast yet seeming to carve a scene in a few seconds, spontaneous and quick, like a snap of the fingers.

I’ll try to explain a little better. You see, I find the father’s face to be perfectly radiant, while the child appears ready to burst out crying. He’s absorbed by her ugly little screwed up expression, while she’s distracted by something higher up. The man obviously has not stood by and watched while a tot was catching a fish, but his face says he believes she did it all on her own. It seems to be authentic; the man didn’t catch a fish and then put the child-sized pole in her hands. Of course, the cute little outfit wouldn’t have been the usual dress for a fishing adventure, but maybe the catch was from shore, a shore with big, melting rocks and maybe some docks with water deep enough to hold fish larger than minnows.

Yes, I’m guessing the father and daughter are on the shore of a river or lake. 

Now for the really odd part. The expressions don’t match, but the father’s gesture is both triumphant and protective, warm yet sturdy, unfailing. He seems to be larger than real life, a fortress, a man who can be trusted. He seems fit, able to handle the hard, uneven rocks while taking the sunlight into his gaze; at least the gleam suggests he is drinking it in and passing it on to the little one he surrounds to keep her from falling while showing her off.

Part 2

I had started the above analysis a while back, maybe even a year ago, but then got distracted or bored. The result was that I was able to gather more information which I can pass along to you. It’s not a lot, but could be of interest.

Judging from other photos in the box I was given, the location of the photo was a riverbank in a northern state. Maybe it was at a camp.

The father’s face looks a bit more sun-burned to me now, a little more leathery and worn. His shoulders have sagged ever so slightly and if I didn’t know better, I’d say his back hurts. The little girl truly seems out of place now in her frilly garments, plus her expression has become one of confusion at noticing the change in her father. She is still wobbly, but has grown stiffer, nevertheless. I am uncertain what this means. Maybe she notices his ears are a little bigger, or she doesn’t trust him to keep her from slipping and falling. She doesn’t seem all that interested in the fish, either.

Come to think of it, the shadows in the photograph have stretched out and darkened. What a few months ago was apparently a sunny summer day has slipped further toward autumn. If you are thinking this reminds you of Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, that’s possible, because there too the portrait ages, although the subject of the portrait does not. Except that in the case that interests me, I am fairly certain that both man and child age along with their photograph. I am unnerved by the changes in the photo, because otherwise it continues to survive the passing of the years. In fact, although the human forms age, their relationship becomes luminous. An odd term, but accurate. A certain slant of light, as the poet wrote, envelopes them. I am blinded by it.

Part 3

I have had to surrender, allowing my inability to decipher this photograph after all. Fortunately, it occurred to me to look on the back. In my mother’s handwriting I read what I hadn’t read from the start. I learn that the image depicts a scene that I have to, I must remember. Now I know who the photographer was and that I squinted while looking up at her, awash in the late August sun.