Black & White Imprinting

Photo From Here

Since I've had a considerable amount of time on my hands lately due to the cold and the snow, I've been spending some of it on the computer. While I've come to the conclusion that the majority of of what's on the internet is not much of an improvement over television, with some of it of course being much, much worse, it does have some decent content and I have at least some control over annoying commercials. During the course of one of my sessions of late, I came across a black and white photo site that is just great. The majority of the images are from the 1950's - some earlier, some later - but great shots, all of them. Lots of street photography and "photojournalism" shots of the type you would have seen accompanying a story in Life magazine. Brassai, Kertesz, Doisneau, Eisenstaedt, they're all represented as would be expected, but there are also some shots by Vivian Maier. Vivian Maier's body of work has only come to light in the last few years. Hers is a fantastic story. If you're not familiar with it, check out the link and spend a little time reading up on her.

My life story on the other hand is pretty mundane. Not a complaint, that. It is what I've made it and all things considered, I'm pretty happy with it. However, after looking at all of those great black and white photos, I've come to the realization that I'm at least two big technology leaps behind in what "colors" my thinking and world view. I'm a Panatomic X guy or maybe a Plus X guy, but not a Kodachrome guy and certainly not a digital kind of guy. When I look at the photo above, I can easily picture that being my grandparents on the carousel. I grew up with black and white images - Life magazine, the daily paper, books, and television. Hell, I think I was close to forty years old before I owned a color television. The Missus and I bought a good black and white set right after we got married and since it kept working, we kept watching.

Where am I going with this, you may ask? No place really. Just ruminating on how much what we are exposed to as youngsters determines who we become as adults - film as metaphor, if you will. Obviously as a school teacher I've seen the effects of childhood influences in determining the resultant adult hundreds, if not thousands of times. Nothing new here as far as that goes, but I wonder what the future will bring for those born, say in the year 2000. Film, whether color or B&W, is for all practical purposes dead. Most everyone has a cell phone, which means everyone has a camera with them most all of the time. So now instead of a carefully composed shot with a twin lens or view camera, we get the internet loaded up with "selfies". While I'm sure there are many great photographers working out there today, the average person would be hard pressed to name one. Thinking about it, I could only come up with a couple, but then again, since I was so strongly influenced by the black and white images of my youth, those are what I typically seek out when looking at photographs.

Fifty years from now what will the recent retirees be looking at and how will they be looking at whatever it is they're looking at? How will growing up in the digital age affect their world view? How will it have affected their educations? Not only did I grow up in the age of B&W photography, but I also grew up in the age of the transistor and space exploration. So I was there at the beginning, so to speak. However, now that I'm on the far side of middle age, I wonder where it's going from here. I'm sure watching Sponge Bob on Saturday morning is no worse than Heckle and Jeckle but what about some of the violent video games? Politicians making Twitter posts? While you want politicians to be of and for the people, do you want them posting crap the same as some eighth grade girl, or worse yet, some knucklehead sitting on a bar stool? Shouldn't someone, someplace be above all of what is basically a waste of technology? Unless there are some quantum leaps in medical technologies, I won't be around to see any of the results in fifty years, but for those of you who will be, I would suggest you give serious thought to the use of technology and, more importantly, the effect it will have on your children.

You never know how what you do as a young man is going to effect who you are as an old man until you get to be an old man and by then it's too late. The die was cast and the race was run. Parent your children wisely.