I remember having my favorite photo taken when I was seven or eight. My mother hired a photographer to meet us at a park. The place had a zoo, a theme park, an amusement park, old tall trees, tennis courts, fishing ponds and large areas of grass. Oh, and bad memories. A few months before the photo session, my mother took me to the same park to tell me that she and my father were going to get a divorce and that everything was going to turn out alright, which of course, it didn't.
And since I was a kid at the photo shoot, I probably would have been uncooperative anyway, and I still might have cried and screamed, which of course, I did.
But that isn't the end of the story, nor the part that I recall. I remember that I finally relaxed
and smiled.
After I finished pouting and crying, the photographer captured the moment, and It may always be my favorite photograph of me, because it taught me that it was OK to be sad. It was OK to feel. And it was OK to smile. I often forget this lesson, but I try to honor it in my work, especially with children.
A woman was looking at my website recently and noticed a photo I had taken of a little girl. The little girl, who has a red flower in her hair, was about the same age that I must have been when my teary eyed photo had been taken. The woman wondered if the young girl had been crying before she smiled. The girl had. I told the woman the story about my photo. When I took the photo of the young girl, I had remembered my experience with the patient photographer. I knew if I waited, she would smile. She did. Smiles almost always follow tears.
When children smile after crying, the muscles are more relaxed and the eyes sparkle. The expression lingers longer; the child gains more trust for the photographer and for expressing emotions. When most people photograph young people (or adults for that matter), children are often told to pretend to be happy. Say "cheese." This is a metaphor for life.
There is a professional photographer who became popular for photographing children when they cry. I don't care much for her work. Won't name her, because I don't like criticizing people publicly, and it will seem like sour grapes, because she is quite famous. She cheats. She gives little children candy; then takes it away. The children cry; she photographs them. She teaches the children not to trust adults or the parents that allowed an adult to steal her candy. Then she captures their image of feeling cheated. This is also a metaphor for life.
Children cry naturally and often, so we can capture these natural moments. I admit, I feel uncomfotable photographing little people when they are crying, but the children do not seem troubled. To children, crying is natural. When children see photographs of themselves crying, they simply label it or tell the story. They don't discredit it. Adults, myself included, find crying awkward and uncomfortable. We make excuses. We minimize it.
As a result, many adults have also lost the ability to cry and smile like children. So, even though I cherish my old favorite photo, I wish the photographer captured one of me crying, just before I smiled, so that I could look at it to remind me that crying is acceptable... or possible.
My children will have photos reminding them that they knew how to cry. (I hope that they don't think that I stole their candy.) I also photograph many other children crying, but since I don't post photos of children on my blog unless I think parents are OK with it, I am only posting photos of my crying children. You might find these startling. When I look at these photos, I wonder what I was doing. I feel like the photographer working with starving children (PUT DOWN THE CAMERA AND GIVE THEM A HUG!!!)
But I have the knowledge of looking at the frames immediately following the tears and the memory of my favorite photo. I know what follows the tears. Usually a well earned grin.
Crying Children - Images by bryan farley
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