A Photo Was Taken for the Sake of Not Looking
April 03, 2024
This photo was taken in 2005, almost 20 years ago.
Usually when looking at a photo I have taken, I am able to recall that specific moment when I clicked the shutter on my camera and what triggered me for that shot. A photo can act as a time machine taking me back to that split second.
But this one, oddly enough, I have no impression of why and when I took it. It is my photo for sure. Since 2001, I have always carried a Contax T3 with me — a small 135 camera, loaded with black and white films. Over a few years, I cultivated a habit of shooting, making that small camera my third eye.
Memory is peculiar. I took photos in order to remember, yet there are moments when, even as I face the photo before me, I cannot recall it. I've forgotten what prompted me to take this photo. Nonetheless, I recognize the place.
It was a hospital located on the outskirts of Shanghai. To get there, I had to take the metro from downtown to the terminal and then switch to a bus. It was quite a journey. More precisely, it's a Cancer Rehabilitation Hospital. However, despite the term 'rehabilitation'... or, to put it another way, the word 'rehabilitation' means more of a sense of 'hope' or 'wish' than reality. It's a place where cancer patients, having undergone various treatments, pin their last hopes.
After I finished scanning this roll of film, I couldn't recall this moment no matter how hard I tried – why and when did I click the shutter, and for what? What day it was in those days? When I recall those days, they were compressed into a hazy memory of just one single day – waking up, helping my mum to wash her face and brush her teeth, preparing her medications, undergoing treatments, making breakfast, receiving IV drips, watching over my mom as she napped, helping her bathe in the afternoon, taking medication again, having dinner. When she felt a little better, we took a slow walk in the hallway, chatting about trivial things on and off.
Every day was the same repetition, the same routine, yet I found gratitude in repeating those tasks. As long as I could still carry them out, the day I feared could remain at a distance. But I knew it would come. Mixed emotions were undoubtedly present – fear, sadness, anxiety, worry, helplessness, hopelessness – while a thin slice of hope remained. Somehow, memory filtered out those emotions that once drowned me. It is strange how recalling those days now feels calm and uneventful. Of course reality was quite the opposite. After losing my father, my mum was in her final days. I was not sure if the turmoil underneath had been repressed or if my mum’s calm energy surpassed it.
"The sky was clear and the wind was gentle." These words didn’t seem fitting to describe my mum’s departure. It was not that there was no excruciating pain tearing at my heart. It was my mum, a person like her, never wanted to disturb even a single ripple. She was so light and gentle, like a faint fragrance, substantial enough to settle in the depths of your heart, yet light enough to be present in every breath you take.
As for this photo, why and when did I take it? Yes, it was in that hospital, but there were no signs of that environment – no IV drips, no medicine, no Mum, no trace of her fragile body. Only the blurry foreground shows a bottle of water and the shapes of lunch boxes. In the distance, the view suggests that we were far away from the city center, far away from our home. A worker was suspended outside the building, painting. It captured a fraction of a second from those long days and nights. Almost twenty years ago, how distant it feels.
I must had been preoccupied with something else in my mind while glancing out the window, and subconsciously clicked the shutter on my small camera. This photo was not taken to remember, but to forget. To forget the view that I needed to take a break from which was behind me, inside the room. From time to time, I had to turn myself away from it. It was too painful to watch. I had to face the window to take a deep breath, to reorganize myself, to reset my mood, and to regather my courages. I needed those moments to be able to turn back and facing her again. She was too fragile, so was I.
What one can truly see is not always through our physical eyes. I didn’t notice the worker painting the wall when I was facing the window took the picture. My eyes were fixed in the opposite direction, where I didn’t dare to look. It was in the room, on the bed, where a beloved fragile body lay, receiving her medicines drop by drop, and her life was counted down second by second.
How could a camera take a photo through your mind’s eyes? It could only capture what was in front of the lens instead of what lied behind. The photo was taken for the sake of not looking.
After they had passed away, I started to use cameras to preserve moments, as I was scared of keep loosing and desperately wanted to hold onto something. After more than twenty years, the more photos I took the more I realized that the most precious moments can not be captured by the mechanical. They could only be captured by our minds and hearts, and I am trying to translate those images into words.
//