Picture Taken

As a child I lived an upper-middle-class life based on the lucrative business of Madison Ave advertising (think MADMEN). My step-father was a photo retoucher, and he eventually owned a graphic arts studio in Manhattan. We were raised with photographs. Our very lives were guided, informed, and controlled by images.

Sometimes those images were in the coffeetable art books that lined our gigantic living room wall and sometimes the images were in the magazines with the retouched fashion models. The images came, of course, from TV, although TV was regarded as BAD FOR YOU by my mother. The images were always more powerful than the truth, more powerful than reality. I was always trying to sniff out the truth - literally. My sniffer is as good as my Labrador's.

My family recorded itself relentlessly with photographs. I always hated having my picture taken, and "taken" was the operative word here: having my picture taken was mandatory, and provided evidence that could be used against me. Once taken, a photo could be scrutinized by my sister or mother, who would say "you look fat, what are you wearing? you aren't cooperating, all you ever are is angry . . ." Body critique was particularly severe, being based on magazine-industry photos of professional models, not on real-life teenagers.

Now it seems our whole society is obsessed, with cell phone cameras, laptop videos, and YouTube. Again the image supersedes, haunts, and abuses the truth. I see the neighborhood teens taking glammy provocative photos of themselves - all eye make-up, puckered lips and scanty clothing. What about the kids who felt like me at that age? How do they find a true image of themselves?

My friend Jennifer once asked me, "Do you remember how in college we essentially wore leaf bags?" She was remembering the baggy clothing we both wore to obscure our lovely figures. To be seen, let alone photographed, was to be taken. We were already violated.