a matter of interpretation
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Part of the great fun in photographing children is the ease with which they slip into their own private world despite the fact that a camera is pointed right in their direction. Because of their innate inquisitiveness and infinite wonder at the world around them, I love the game of following them with camera and making up my own ideas of what they might be contemplating in their busy little heads. Of course I’m sure I’m nearly always wrong. But I don’t mind…….the joy is in putting my own little interpretive spin on their expressions and body language. Sometimes I assign great meaning to a moment that appears to be deeply thoughtful, when the reality of the scene is that the kid is merely plotting to get his hands on his little brother’s hot wheels car and send it racing into oblivion just to annoy the heck out of him.
Sometimes I think we adults get so hung up on what we observe and then decide is “absolute truth” that we too quickly dismiss the enchantment of “what might possibly be true”. We create magic in our lives by allowing ourselves to believe that there really is magic. It’s all how we choose to perceive any given situation. Absolute truth is a myth and always subjective.
I was having a great time as I took this first shot imagining the powerful thoughts that might running through this little boy’s head. I’d decided that surely he was in a profound moment of existential angst, pondering who he is and why he is here. And I was right there with him as his attentive student, waiting anxiously for the answers in hopes that he might share them with me.
A week later, as I sat with his parents on the evening of their proof meeting, they both came to a dead stop once they turned the page to where this particular image was featured. They leaned in closer to take it in more fully, and I thought to myself, “Oh, they’re getting this…..they see the deeper meaning here”. I was sorta puffed up and feeling like I’d really captured on film a rare and thought-provoking moment. Then they looked at each rather seriously, looked back once more at the image, shook their heads and broke into hysterical laughter. “He’s pooping”, they simultaneously roared. “We know that look and body language”, his mother explained, “and he is clearly in the middle of pooping”.
No sale on this image.
But I still say that it’s all a matter of interpretation.
~Cynthia
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