Issue #5: Old Photographs

When I was in my late teens, old photographs used to give me a feeling best described as melancholy.

Dusty pictures in drawers, sticky albums under coffee tables, framed portraits on the mantle; all those weddings and baby pictures and old houses and dogs would make me dwell on the great impermanence of it all. A captured and caged past pressed me with a hollow weight. I saw youth and the important moments of life as fleeting and disposable, and it depressed the hell out of me.

I have since mellowed; and my naive nihilism grew into something more profound. The cynical questions, "What does it matter?" and "Why bother?" gave way to wondering, "What is it all about?" and "Why are we here?" There are no answers, and looking at old photographs I can now see how my doubts are the universal doubts of humankind. The fashions and the technology and the architecture and the cars have changed, but the questions remain. Through all of the pursuits and failures that reside in us all, we share this great question of discovery, and I can take comfort in that.

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with the documentary historian Ken Burns for an article we're putting together for next month. Burns is known for his "Civil War" documentary, and more recently, "The War." He is also known for what some call the "Ken Burns Effect," a technique of filming photographs with standard camera shots such as pan, tilt and reveal, hovering over each image and discovering the details inside them that tell the story.

He said, "I try to will the past alive with photographs. The only way I can make them come alive is by getting inside the photographs, by listening to them."

This is what we've tried to do with our feature story in issue #5, and will continue to do with future pieces on history. Our goal is to listen to the story inside the photograph, and not hear the decay, but the resonance.