Photo Infatuation

So here's something not many people know about me: I love looking at other people's photographs. No really, it's true. I do not get bored of pouring over albums that contain the photographic record of a holiday at the sea, or one marking the milestones of the budding family. Sure, anyone who's been to London has the same standard set of pictures (the lion guarding Trafalgar Square, Big Ben from across the road, The London Eye from below, and from inside, hovering over the Thames, the neon lights of Picadilly Circus, and a handful of silly poses alongside the inhabitants of Madame Tussaud's)). I suppose that once you've seen one lot of pics, you've seen them all, and yet I find browsing through these archives strangely engrossing.

I've mulled it over a bit, and there are a couple of reasons why I kind of fancy perusing people's piccies.

Firstly, I like to look for the pictures that work, and the ones that don't. This is a purely selfish reason of course, and all aimed at improving my own photographic ability. It's nice to get ideas for different photo shoots. Everyone has a selection of similar photos: there are the ones with the kids in the mud (or self-decorated with finger paint), the kids in the bath, the kids blowing out a birthday candle, or someone holding up a glass of booze and 'cheers-ing' the camera. But not everyone has a picture of their little girl ogling over a ladybug alighted on her finger, or of their little boy mesmerized by the planes at the airshow, or a picture of the filthy soles of little feet that have been "helping" in the garden. So I flip through albums in a creative research kind of mode.

I also like to check out how silly people used to look. You know, before I met them. Those pictures that you just want to die were ever taken? Well, I get a giggle from rating that eighties perm, those silly sunglasses that you thought were so cool, how young your parents were (Oh. My. Word. Your mom was Hot!), the practiced pose against the family room wall that was the official photo spot for the annual Christmas photograph. It's kind of cathartic witnessing the metamorphosis of the spotty geeky colour-retarded teenager into the fairly respectable lady sitting across the coffee table from me that I will not flinch being seen in public with. Great pal, aren't I?

But I suppose the strangest reason I enjoy other people's photos is this. I have this weird fantasy that one day I will be paging through somebody's archive of pictures from a time before we knew each other, and while I'm flipping through their pictures of their English holiday, or the wedding of a distant cousin, I'll see me in the background. And for once, I will have photographic proof of just how small the world really is.