To Capture a Moment

Photographs have always fascinated me, especially portraits...how you can stop time... freeze a look... and keep that person or moment suspended forever. Of major influence in my life were the photographs of Edward Curtis and of those who have been called "concerned photographers" - Robert Capa, André Kertesz, Werner Bischof, among others. Eugene Smith's powerful and disturbing documentation of the tragedy and genocide which mercury poisoning visited upon the people of Minimata, Japan can not easily be forgotten; his efforts brought world wide attention to the actions of the polluters who had ravaged the bodies and minds of the victims and had destroyed their communities and way of life. It also brought the people of Minimata together with the Ojibway people of Grassy Narrows, Ontario, who were just beginning to face the same devastating health and life issues from mercury having been discharged into their waterways by companies unconcerned with the value of human life.
The photographs which we as individuals "snap" are usually, but not always, less dramatic. Comes to mind a picture my daughter took a couple of years ago while photographing a mountain fire. The moment captured shows a "slurry bomber" dropping its load on the smoke-filled mountain. Dramatic enough until one is told that the plane went down...into the mountain...seconds later.
All photographs though can be equally as powerful and thought provoking. Yesterday, while searching for something else, I came upon a notebook with some photographs - portraits - I'd taken long ago as a student in Toronto. I stop to look at them, momentarily distracted from the task at hand, and see faces I haven't gazed upon in decades. Truthfully, some I haven't thought about over the years, but the others...those I often wonder about...how their life has unfolded...even whether they're still here among the living...look back at me frozen in the time of our youth....and for a moment, it seems impossible that all these years have gone by.
As I look upon their faces, I can feel them as they were...see the way their eyes twinkled or saddened, how their faces moved as they spoke, and their mouths broke into rivers of laughter or became silent on reflection...as I look upon their faces I remember who they were...the tone and expression of their voices...the goodness in their manner...the carefreeness that we were fortunate enough to be able to enjoy at that particular time in our lives...before we all left that reality behind and moved on. As I look upon their faces I give thanks for the people I have known who have blessed my life with theirs...and have helped it be a life filled with captured moments.