Legacy Images
What do you want your photographs to accomplish? Sell a product, capture beauty or a fleeting moment, promote your work, start a revolution? Do you want your photos to be a legacy? Do you want them to be cherished by someone, even if that is only a few people? Are you okay if the impact is small, but for the people to whom it effects, it can bring tears, laughter or a flood of memories? Again, do you want your images to be legacy?
The repeat of the word legacy is to make you think. We hear the word legacy often when referring to a reputation of someone who has died. Motivational speakers encourage you to leave a legacy. Financial planners will ask if you want to leave a legacy of financial certainty for your children. Certainly, there are some images most of us recall which left a legacy. I bet the following images are so powerful, that you can see them in your mind without me showing them. Malcome Browne captured Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc as he burned to death on a Saigon street in 1963. The calm figure Phuc in the lotus pose, engulfed in flames while not moving a muscle is unforgettable. Nick Ut witnessed and captured an image of Phan Thi Kim Phuc’s terror-struck face as she ran for her life in the infamous “Napalm Girl.” An image so powerful that I bet you can see many of the details in your mind right now. Another image that never leaves your mind is the execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém. His face tells the story of a man bracing for the end an instant before a bullet takes his soul. Every fiber of his being embraces, even his hair is frozen in revolt. Eddie Adams shot a series of images starting in the few moments leading up to and after the execution. This all happened quickly when watching the video someone else captured, which actually shows Adams step in to take this legacy image. That one image, a fraction of a second, has lived on since 1968. These images created and left a legacy with the subjects featured and all of them will be a legacy left by the photographers who were there, ready and able to capture these moments—a double legacy. These are not the legacy images I am talking about. Think smaller.
Most of us will never be on assignment in a conflict area and capture images that can change the course of history. Globally, we capture around 1.4 trillion images yearly. Many of these will inevitably be from a slightly higher angle while the subject makes a duck face, and yes, even some of them will be a legacy.
If you have not figured out what I am talking about yet, let me tell you a story about a legacy image I captured. When I shot this image, nothing stood out as extraordinary. It was a simple image. One person, one light, one dog and a few minutes of their time. Although I liked the image, it never crossed my mind again after delivering it to the client. There was no way for me to know that a handful of people would cherish this image–that it would be a legacy image for them. It was quirky and captured a connection between the dog and his owner. I had actually forgotten about the first image when I took a second image of the same dog and his owner years later and he asked me to create it again. Just a man, kneeling by his dog, a paw on his knee like a prom picture. We joked during the first session that it was a knockoff of the standard prom image, and by anyone’s guess, that is all it was, but we were wrong. This image has power, a power that was hidden until eight years later when someone enlarged it and put it on an easel next to a casket. A casket that had a young father, husband and beloved friend in it. Someone that left suddenly. Someone that is missed and someone who those that love him see in this silly image that somehow captured the essence of the man they will never forget. This image is a legacy for a small group of people, and that is good enough for me. If any other image I captured left a legacy, I am not aware of it, but I know of at least this one. The reality hit me when I saw the image displayed because I did not know the family wanted to print it. This was an eye-opening experience since the subject’s family doesn’t even know me. His friends where he and I worked know me, but his family could not pick me out in a lineup. However, knowing that this family can look at a silly image I took and think of the loving, funny and kind man they knew is humbling.
Think back to a grandparent who you miss, an old pet, or close friend. I have a photo of my grandpa holding a puppy somewhere in warzone that I cherish. My grandpa has a stern look on his face, but he is holding up this cute dog. That was my grandpa and some solider took this image not knowing it was a legacy image. Another image I have that I cherish is of my mom when she was about ten years old. She was healthy then, and at that moment, she was in the spotlight at the helm of a small ship. The center of attention, which was rare for her. Not long after this, my mom’s life changed forever, and she never had this level of innocence again. It was an image I had never seen until she suddenly died a few years ago at age 56. It helped me see my mom before addiction, mental illness and suffering consumed and destroyed her. This image is a legacy image to me and no one else in the world, but it is still a legacy image. For reasons I can’t explain here, I chose not to share this image, it has that kind of power for me.
These images and experiences illuminated how the photos we take do not need to be grand or start global change like the ones I listed at the start, which were also related to violence. Sometimes a legacy image just makes someone smile and remember a loved one they miss dearly. If you are lucky enough to know which images you took became legacy images, be grateful because the reality is, you often don’t know the power your image might hold. The point of this story is to take those images now. Take many images and not just the posed ones. Take images of your loved ones in their element or doing things that make you think of them. I still hold a legacy image in my mind of my grandpa Ashdown in his garden with a shovel and his cowboy hat. Before he got sick, I wanted to take this image, but I procrastinated and then he died. I think my family may have enjoyed that image too.
That lesson stuck with me so later my wife and I surprised my grandma Ashdown on her last day as a service missionary at the LDS Conference Center by setting up our whole family as her last tour. She loved it, we loved it and there were many photos taken. The last photo I took of her that day was her walking back to turn in her identification card. She had forgotten it and I wanted to capture her last moments as a missionary. The symbolism of turning in her badge meant something to me. Below are a series of images from this day. My grandma hates having her photo taken and this is the only way we could make it happen. She is a wonder and gentle soul. We are fortunate to still have her with us at age 93, and hope to keep her as long as we can. The world will go a little darker without her.
