Imlisanen Jamir
Bad photos are rare these days. And if there are any, and cannot be edited or enhanced, they are quickly discarded. It’s become easy to get rid of imperfection, in the face of a cost-free click to make faults disappear from our digital life.
Things were not always like this though. Imperfect photographs were aplenty, as if taunting their imperfect subjects. Those were times when most pictures—unflattering, off-center, accidental, overexposed, and everyone as red-eyed as vermin—were not worth keeping. We struggled with operating the focus, didn’t know when to turn off the flash, or how; and few people had any aesthetic sense.
We never knew what we would get once that button was clicked. We had to wait usually a week or longer, until 24-hour photo shops, with their bargain-basement development quality, were introduced. We’d drop off the little black plastic roll, full of hope, barely remembering what was on there, because film was precious and the roll may have taken months to complete. All this, only to open the envelope and discover one blurred atrocity after another.
Looking through that time, it must have been hard to fathom the impending dominance of the selfie. Who knew how much people would adore taking pictures of themselves? That teenagers; a traditionally awkward and self-conscious set could spend entire afternoons posing and perfecting shots of themselves. That seniors; worldwide, would love selfies so much, tour buses would make stops not for plain old photos of landscapes and landmarks but for pictures of the tourists themselves.
Restaurants and hotels would design bathroom lighting specifically to enhance selfie potential. Yes, bathroom lighting. But the background in all of these situations is secondary to the main attraction, because in our perfected and selected selfies, we all always look our best.
And yet, there is something we miss about those less inhibited, less groomed days—something that has gotten lost amid the relentless Instagram parade of duck pouts, raised eyebrows, cross eyed, three-quarter-angled images. We maintain that keen curiosity to recapture the not-knowing-what-the-hell-is-on-there waiting period that analog film required.
Is it possible that bad photos showed us something we wanted or needed to see?
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