Have you ever felt shattered and wished there was a tape or glue strong enough to hold your life together?
I had some tough years. Everything felt broken in my life – my marriage, my finances, my car, my health. I felt ugly, unappreciated, unloved, and lonely. This poem was written during that time:
Who can love me?
So many faults, so many failings…
No outward beauty to behold.
A worn-out heart in need of mending,
A body weak and feeling old.
Who can love me?
Insecure, full of fear.
A hardened face is what I see.
Surely that mirror image isn’t really me.
Who can love me?
Touch my hand, caress my face,
Look deep and find a beauty.
Protect.
Strengthen.
Mend my heart and set it free.
Who can love me?
Who can love me?
And can love really heal all the tired broken places –
Touch my heart and make it feel?
Who can love me?
Sometime I will write an article dedicated to the events that brought out those feelings and the lessons that came from them. For now, I am starting with just this one.”
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Albert Einstein
To get out of my rut and somehow force things to change in my life, I did what I’ve found useful when I feel blocked – I force a change, any change. Albert Einstein’s quote, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” is my inspiration for this thinking. My choice this time was to take a photography class.
Photography isn’t the most practical class to take when you’re broke. It can be an expensive hobby (at least it was before digital). Taking rolls and rolls of film for just one right picture and then wasting a whole lot of photo paper in the dark room to get the perfect print can be costly, but, I loved it!
Self Portraits Reveal Something About Yourself
One assignment in that class was to take a self-portrait. We were graded on a lot of things: positioning, lighting, the settings on the camera, the quality of the negative and of course, the final print. We had to turn in our negatives as well because the quality of the negative is key to being able to get a good final print.
Taking a self-portrait was quite a daunting experience for me. I hated having my picture taken under any circumstances. I was always shocked at pictures of myself. What I saw was a recording of ugliness and shame. Considering my emotional state at that time in my life, this was by far the hardest assignment I could have been given.
Two rolls of film were spent on this project, 72 pictures! I posed sitting on a chair against a blank wall and with backgrounds, standing erect or crouched down, with my head resting on my arms, my hands, or a pillow. Then I worked on my gaze, looking up, down and off into the distance reflectively. None of those pictures said, “Yep, that’s me!”
My Self Portrait
Finally, I got one that felt right. With the camera on the dresser next to me, I got a shot of myself looking into the mirror. Neither the negative nor the print were worthy of a great grade, but it was the keeper because it came the closest to what felt like me.
In dim lighting, only half my face was visible. I wasn’t smiling. The picture could represent anything or nothing. Yes, I thought, that’s me.
What Negatives are you Keeping in a Box?
Life’s a lot like developing film. You end up with a lot of negatives. Each one of them is a potential picture, but there’s work involved to coaxing out the finished print. Sad to say, some never take the next step. Figuratively, they keep all their negatives in a box, never exposing them to light or dunking them into the developing trays. They never get to see the pictures!
It’s pretty safe to say most of us understand what a negative is, whether it’s in life or in film. But what is a picture? It is the mirror image of the negative, the positive side of it. In the negative, the darkness is forefront and in the positive, the darkness is still there, but it is in the background, it is contrast.
How is this mirror image manifest? By exposer to light. How much light and for how long is dependent on the quality of the negative and the expertise of the eye of the one doing the developing work. Even after that work and when it seems right, it’s still not finished, It still must be “set,” which is done by bathing it in developing solutions.
All of this “work” is done in a very dark room under a special red light. This process can be ruined if it is too soon exposed bright light. After the picture finally comes out of the solution trays, it is hung to dry. Only then are they safe to come out and be seen under the light of day.
What if All You Ever Saw was Negative?
Imagine never seeing anything but negatives! No true pictures of beauty, only darkness where there should be light, no details, no clarity.
The work of getting a good print sometimes means wasting a lot of photo paper as you practice skills with light exposure, but a great picture is worth it! Other times, you try working with a crappy negative and find no useful picture can be found in it. Those you discard in the end because they aren’t worth holding onto. Then there are the negatives that take more skill in developing, but still produce great images, but trimming and cropping out the bad parts.
To wax philosophical, our life is like film in the camera and our beliefs and views are the snapshots of what we hope to create. Our experiences become the negatives or film strips we will work with. God is the light and the guide, but we are the developer who says how much light gets in, for how long, whether we go into the developing tray or not and whether we are willing to hang out to dry.
My experiences have produced some fantastic negatives. I admit at times I’ve tried to show pictures of my life by holding the negatives up for view. The only use for that is to show what was and what could be side by side. To show only the negative is useless! It is the lessons learned – the positive results – the final picture that counts. That’s what people look for, and get inspired by.
So much of what I thought was missing in my life wasn’t missing at all — it just couldn’t be seen yet. Look at your life and ask yourself what you are looking at and what you are looking for. Is there still some dark room work to do? Finding the light to transform it can be a challenge, but when it comes, you are on the road to the picture of you’re a beautiful, well contrasted life!
JOIN ME IN A SELF-PORTRATE CHALLENGE
This year, I am creating 12 new self-portraits of myself. I will be writing about my experiences with them, what I learn by creating them. I hope some of you will participate with me!
Consider yourself invited. Let’s get cozy!