I shot a couple of short videos with a friend of mine recently and as his wife has just given birth to their second child I suggested taking a video of his son and baby daughter. He did not want to, saying that he could take pictures in frames but moving images only made him realise how quickly time is moving on. Thinking about it as someone who has had TV in his home only intermittently, I often recall not seeing anyone for years then looking at them reading the news and saying ‘wow aren’t they looking old’.
Movement is all about time of course, but it must play heavily on our imaginations and memories because my friend is not alone in feeling greater sorrows at time passing through watching videos and people actually being as you remember them, than in looking at a still photograph which captures a moment but does not show the full force of life in the person or people.
Associating movement with life may be obvious, but the concomitant sorrow that comes with time passing and remembrance of times past depends to a great extent upon one’s philosophy. I said to my friend if you don’t take the video of the children what are you going to torment them with when they bring home their first girlfriends and boyfriends?
And how better to show successive generations that we were no wiser than they and no less alive.