Photography changes what we’re willing to reveal of ourselves
Story by visitor contributor
Tien Nguyen
Tien Nguyen, from Lincoln, Nebraska, participated in an 8th grade Language Arts writing project that explored how photographs can illustrate a true experience or event and also reveal an unspoken reality behind the image.
Yesterday, I was cleaning my room and a photo from my old Japanese book dropped on the floor. I bent down to pick it up and examined it. “It’s a picture from third grade class,” I voiced out loud. The me in the photo was quite irritating. I felt rage building up inside of me just looking at the picture. In the photo was me, and plastered on my face was a tooth-aching grin. I wanted to scream out why was I grinning; I wanted to but I did not. I just sat there, clutching the photo as if it were my lifeline.
Coincidentally I had found a picture of me that was taken last month. I had a fake smile, the one that I showed at school. Both photos had a nostalgic feel to them, except the more recent photo was a lie. Every second that I looked at my old photo made me want to ask, “How are you smiling so openly?” When I look at the other photo I ask, “Why can’t you show your true emotions?” I was snapped out of my thoughts when I heard my parents coming home. Well brooding won’t do anything, I thought as I got ready for bed. “Maybe I don’t have . . . to . . . know . . . ,” I thought, as slumber claimed me.
