Onions

I'm read this interesting book by Gunter Grass. It is called "Pealing the Onion". The book is about Grass' past. The idea is that looking at the past is like peeling an onion, where do you stop to get at the truth. The book is filled with lots of stories that may or may not be true, but that add up to who you are. When I talk to Alex about our first trip to Disney World, he doesn't really remember it. He has seen the photographs, but this is not enough. Disney World is part of his truth but not really a part of his personal story.

I have been scanning a lot of old pictures of my family into my computer. I am going to make a short video of my family history. Some pictures I look at and the scene is vivid. I remember the little girl who wanted to be my wife. She lived on the steep hill (not that steep when I saw it as an adult). I remember the back porch of our house, I remember sledding and riding my large tricycle very fast down the sidewalk until I hit a crack and went flying, cutting myself in many places.(Not the first time and certainly not the last time I did something like this.)

Of course not having clear memories of being 5 is not surprising. The problem is that I try to remember my years in San Francisco, and they are not that clear. I was 22 when I moved there. I am even having a difficult time creating a clear picture of my first marriage.

Maybe the idea is not to care about the facts of your past, the only thing that really matters is the story you tell yourself and others. This is really what defines you.

There used to be a group of photographers called the f64 group. These guys believed that photographs needed to tell the truth and not be manipulated. If they had a beautiful picture of a beach and there was a piece of garbage on the beach, they would never move it, because that would be dishonest. F64 is an f stop that gives you the greatest amount of depth of field. Everything is sharp. The photographer is not manipulating your attention by making some things in focus and some not.

Sounds good until you realize that the photographer pointed the camera at what he/she wanted to see, so that was dishonest. The aspect ratio was defined by the film manufacturer, so in this they were being manipulated by corporate America.

Today the argument is about Photoshop. Are you being dishonest when you manipulate a picture. I have seen many Photoshoped pictures that I thought were dishonest. They were manipulated to make a point about a subject with out regard to the subject. I took a photograph of two girls on the beach in Coney Island. There was a fire plug in the middle of the photo. I removed it. I also enhanced the colors to make them brighter. I do not consider this to be dishonest. I was trying to capture what Coney Island felt like that day and the mood of the girls. The colors as shot were not necessarily more correct. They were just a digital representation of what was there, not the truth of what colors were there. I was not trying to make a statement about girls on the beach. I saw two girls and I wanted to try and tell their story. Filtered through me of course. But I was trying to tell their story, not mine.

What can someone do. Give up on truth, because it doesn't really exist. That seems like a bad idea. Authors who make up parts of their autobiographies are reviled. We do not want people to go out of their way to lie to us. What happens if I tell you my life story and parts of it I believe in, but turn out not to be true. Maybe the little 5 year old girl did not want to marry me. Maybe I wasn't that great of a football player in high school. If you are a public figure every time you make a statement someone is checking out if it is factually correct. It makes it difficult to have your own personal story.

I am definitely not talking about people who create a myth around themselves for their own self aggrandizement. These are the people we are all mad at when they are exposed. My image of what I did in San Francisco forty years ago is part of my story. I am sometimes disturbed that I don't remember it with enough detail. But I am also willing to accept the fact that it is my story. What I remember defines me. Truth does not.

I am reposting the picture I am talking about.