“Movies
are life without the boring parts”
Alfred Hitchcock
Moblogs (Mobile
+ Weblogs) demand to be published in chronological order, thus
making photographs a symbolic set that is much more important and
congruent than if the same pictures were to be put in a photo album,
with a previous arbitrary selection.
In experimenting with the constant publishing of family pictures in
a moblog –something only possible through cell-phones with a
camera- I discovered that this apparently innocuous organization feature
– a picture follows another, and the latest is the first that
is seen published- was giving away a secret to me.
After 10 months of sending pictures every day to Textamerica (a rate
of approximately 6.5 photos per day) I realized that I am making neither
an album nor a web log, not even a moblog; I am making a map.
Albums
Historically, family photos have been kept in albums (including all
the places where images could be stored, such as notebooks, folders,
organizers, blank sheets of paper) for family remembrance or posterity.
The photographic rhythm is marked by meaningful events: Marriages,
births, birthdays, trips, homecomings, graduations, visits from relatives…
These situations offer opportunities for capturing relevant moments
that later will be milestones in the family’s history.
These images will end up grouped in the family ‘s photo album.
The opportunity to organize photographs within albums -an activity
that in most cases was performed by the family’s mother- was
a key moment in the construction of the family’s narrative.
During this process the filers would prefer different kinds of order
to the chronological order, placing these photos into many, many albums.
The result would be a trip album, albums of family visits to different
places, albums of the “little kid of the house” where
the photos of the child would be taken out of context, seen through
the months or years, also photo albums sent from faraway places by
a relative.
It seems that chronological order and accuracy in notes and information
never were a goal of family albums. This is a characteristic that
probably is to blame for the fragmentary remembrance of a family’s
history produced by these photo albums, which could only be explained
by the remaining living relatives.
Chronos
"What is time?
If nobody asks I know,
if anyone asks I don't."
San
Agustin
Contrary to the traditional ways of storing images, moblogs inflexibly
impose the chronological order. Photos cease to be seen individually
and become a true “family” of images, a photo follows
another, that is the sister of the next one and so on. Sequence links
the pictures, not their subject.
|
| My
son, Vicente, Two minutes later, my son Joaquin. The bottom picture
was taken before. Published by JG in Textamerica |
Used
to seeing family photos with unclear dates, I discovered that the
accuracy in the timeline that is offered by the moblogs could be the
key in a different kind of family narrative.
 |
| Photos
used to be dated by the photo lab and presented the date in which
the photos were developed (The focus of the Nokia does not allow
to see JUL 76K) |
Document
As days go by (my moblog goes back to July 2003) I feel more anxious
about losing the family photos and the relationship they have in the
moblog. I have made allsorts of backups but I have the feeling of
not possessing them, Until they are printed I feel these pictures
do not exist completely; There is an non transferable documentary
aspect in printing that cannot be escaped not by me or by the photos.
In attempting to store the photos I have published in Textamerica
and Buzznet I have printed some mosaics that put together entire sequences
of photos taken with a cell phone.
 |
| A
printed series taken with a Nokia 6600 |
Either
small or big, I do not think that family photos really “exist”
until they are printed. It is most important for a family photographer
to have a hard copy in any format, so they can grow old being somewhere
around the house and not in a CD or a server.
In this sense, moblogs are not less limited than any other digital
storing method. But they have instilled a new desire, to know in detail
relationships, dates and captions. Even more, if, I could I would
want to have the date and time of publishing and the time it was captured
by the telephone. Even better I would like to have my pictures with
the date and time in which they were captured by the telephone, not
the time and date in which they were published in the server.
 |
| Another
series printed in a 10x15 format |
Snapshots
We used to take around 300 family photos each year before the telephones
with cameras, now I take that number in 6 weeks.
When one of my children arrives from school, when we go out for a
walk, when we go shopping, I take and publish a picture in any time.
 |
|
While I walk with my son Pedro, we go by the MIguel Cane public
library, where Jorge Luis Borges worked for may years. Pedro listens
to my story and looks at the place. |
Magnitudes
If I keep up this rate of photographing (6.5 family photos per day)
I will have 2372 in a year. Strictly placed one after the other. If
I decided to print all those photos in a 10x15 format costing $0.75
(in any currency) I would have to spend $1779.00. I would need sixty
eight 36-photo albums of each, or twenty three 100-photo albums that
would take most of my library. If lined up, these photos would be
over 14 miles long. Just in a year.
 |
|
My wife and I. I stretch my arm, look up and shoot as if photographed
by someone else. This is one of the few possibilities of entering
to my moblog without doing the typical self-portrait. Nokia in
front of the mirror. Note: My wife is taller than me. |
I
can imagine my 23720 photos in 10 years as long as we don’t
travel and no other family member decides to take any photos. In 10
years I would have 140 miles worth of photos. It would take 2 hours
by car going to 62 miles an hour to see them all.
Cartography
In his text “Del
rigor en la Ciencia” (On the rigor of Science, english version), Argentinian
write Jorge Luis Borges imagines an empire whose cartographers are
so deft as to manage to make a “Map equal in size to the
Empire Itself” .Borges in the same text tells us that the
following generations discovered the uselessness of such a map, and
“ abandoned it to the cruelty of the Sun and the winter”.
I understand
that my moblog , my map of family pictures will tend to turn into
the map of Borges’ cartographers, Such accuracy renders the
album useless. An album in which each day is divided into “6.5
chapters”.
This
accumulation of photographs is so curious that when I revisit my moblog
nothing draws my attention more than the missing photos, the unrecorded
things. Then I ask myself “What happened between the supermarket
photo and the photo of my wife in front of the computer? What did
I see and not photograph that I don’t remember?”
No matter
what I do or how I store it, my grandchildren or their children will
leave these photos to the sun.
Julian
Gallo
gallo1@fibertel.com.ar
Professor of New Media in the joint Master’s program of Journalism
of the San Andrés University, Columbia University and the Clarín
news group.
