My name's Chris. When I was once asked to pick three words to describe myself,
I wrote need more words, which got me into a great deal of trouble.
snapshots plural n. \ˈsnap-ˌshäts\
My father calls the pictures I take snapshots with a hint of the same tone of voice he uses when he says the word marginal. He uses the word to describe restaurants whose menu consists of different kinds of hamburgers, for example, or movies with Will Ferrell in them.
He takes photographs, however. As long as I have been alive, he has been a dedicated photographer. When my sister was perhaps two years old, he took a photo of her peering up at the camera from inside the canvas bag we carried our beach things in. She smiles playfully at the camera, as if she has been playing hide-and-seek with the photographer and has just been discovered as the shutter of the camera opens. My father sent the photo to a contest run by a local newspaper, and though it only won a honorable mention, the editors ran the photo beside the article announcing the results. He had been published.
Back then, he had a single-lens reflex camera with a flash mounted up top that made a pleasing clacking noise when you adjusted its angle. Over time, he has collected photography equipment the same way he does radios -- he has more of it than he really needs, but he doesn't collect simply to accumulate things. Each lens or camera has a specific purpose, sometimes even a history. He has a Diana camera because my mother had one as a toy when she was a child. He thinks the following around it is a little silly.
My father brings a camera nearly everywhere, sometimes two. He fades into the background at family gatherings, presses the viewfinder to his eye, clicks the button as we talk. I have learned not to look at the camera, to pretend it is not there -- that he isn't there, either.
The first year my sister brought the man who would become her husband on our yearly family vacation, my father made all of us stand on the sand dunes together in the golden hour, posed us for a seemingly interminable length of time. Turn a little this way. Take a step to your left. My mother explained afterwards: "He's really happy."
I never picked up my father's skill at photography. I read the books he had, liked the discussions of focus and light but never really understood what an F-stop was, or even if it mattered. I took a camera with me when I visited Paris ten years ago, but only snapped photos of objects and art, not people. A sign directing you down the stairs to the metro. The way a lamppost curves at its top. The exterior of the Louvre just before dinnertime. The fountains at Versailles. I chose these snapshots because I wanted to remind myself what it was like to be there. I never felt I needed to show anyone proof that I myself had been. Why else would you take a picture of yourself?
When my sister became pregnant, my father bought a high-definition video camera. The chime the camera makes whenever he turns it on is identical to the one that begins a remix of R.E.M.'s "I'll Take the Rain." He holds the camera out in front of himself when he records; though it has a viewfinder, he uses the LCD mounted on its side instead. It looks as if he is scanning the world -- for gold or life signs, maybe.
I visited my sister with my parents two weeks after her son was born. We were sitting on a couch together after we finished lunch. She asked: "Would you like to hold him?" I said yes and tried awkwardly to cradle his head the way my brother-in-law instructed. My nephew looked at me, confused. I couldn't tell whether he was unhappy or not. His eyebrows wrinkled.
I asked, "No?" He frowned and looked away briefly at something above us. The camera chimed. His eyes turned back to my face. Blue. All babies' eyes are blue, I had learned the day he was born. They change in a few weeks' time, if they will ever change. The frown left his face but he still seemed undecided. I felt everyone's eyes on me. I felt the camera on me. Sweat was forming at my forehead. My nephew's eyes rolled back into his head a little; my sister had told me about that, that they did that when he was sleepy, that it wasn't cause for alarm.
"No?" I repeated. His eyes focused on me again. Just curious now. Emotions seemed to flicker across his face, none able to find purchase. Finally, he started to fuss a little. Not cry, but he needed something. I tried to give him back to my sister, but I was terrified of doing something wrong. My brother-in-law lifted him up from my arms. It seemed effortless, how he did it. I thought of my father giving us baby lifts when we were small, raising us up all the way to the ceiling with his arms and then bringing us gently back down. The camera chimed again.
