Kelci Flynn’s Photo Essay:

Kelci and Conner Throughout the Years

Introduction

I had a very difficult time coming up with a subject for this photo essay that would have a deep

meaning. I wanted to invest myself in a topic I was passionate about and a point I would like to

share with my class. I am fascinated with people and emotions, and one subject kept coming back

into my head. I wanted to explore the relationship between my younger brother and I. My parents

divorced and my father remarried when I was almost two. He and his new wife gained custody of

me and even though she was not the woman who gave birth to me, she became my mom. When I

was four years old my parents asked me what I wanted more than anything in the whole world. I

told them a bike. About 7 months later, I still didn’t have a new bike, but I had a new baby brother.

I was so in love with my baby brother, wanting to be with him every minute, to watch over him and

keep him safe. My little brother, Conner, is now 17 and even though he towers over me I can still

say the same thing is true. Conner is truly my best friend in the entire world and that is what I

wanted to portray through my photo essay. My goal is to show in the 17 years that have passed

and been captured on film, together Conner and I have experienced countless heartbreaks,

accomplishments, tragedies, and celebrations. However, through it all nothing in our relationship

has changed- it has only been made stronger. My intent was to put the pictures from the past,

next to my remade photographs of Conner and I in order to show the passing of time. I wanted to

show that although time passes in the blink of an eye, it is wonderful to be able to look back at old

photographs and reminisce.

Analysis

For this essay I had to go through endless amounts of boxes with literally hundreds upon

hundreds of photos to choose the ones of Conner and I that I feel best describe our relationship

and show the most emotion. I wanted to show that photographs can capture and make a person

aware of emotions and love that sometimes may never be seen otherwise. I choose 12 photos that

would best portray our relationship and the love we share. I took pictures of the older

photographs with my iPhone because I found that they come out better quality than if I scan them

on my computer. The older pictures were all photographed by my mom with her camera, that she

would then have to take to the drug store to get developed and get back days later. For the

remade photographs my mom was once again the one behind the camera, but this time we used

my iPhone. I did this to show the difference of then and now. Years ago the most popular way to

take photographs was with her “Pentax Zoom 35mm” camera with film. Today, due to the good

quality but mostly the conveience, the most popular way to take a picture is with your cell phone.

The iphone also seemed like it was the best option to remake the photographs because it includes

features for me to edit and crop the photos almost instantly so that they look most like the pictures

of the past. I did not use any specific app, because the edits I needed were so simple they are

already built into my cell phone. The most difficult thing about recreating the photos was that we

have grown so much so to get photograph us from the same angle and position was sometimes

difficult. For example, the picture of us in the shed was almost impossible to recreate in the same

way. Conner is now taller than I am, so to get him in front of me and shorter than me was difficult.

It was also impossible to get the same angle because even though we still have the same shed, the

doors would not shut as far because we are now too big and took up too much room. So

unfortunately, with that picture we could not get the same symmetrical look. The edits were also

difficult to remake because the “black and white” filter on my phone was much more pure white

than the film my mom had used was.

I love photographs and having the ability to look back at memories so I have made scrapbooks

for my parents, friends, and grandparents in the past. Kuhn states in Remembrance “Family

photographs are quite often deployed- shown, talked about-in series: pictures get displayed one

after another, their selction and ordering as meaningful as the pictures themselves” (399). In my

experience, scrapbooks I have seen, and have made myself have always gone in chronological

order, allowing the viewer of the scapbook to see the passing of time. In this photo essay, I did not

organize it in chronological order on purpose. I wanted the viewer to be able to see Conner and I in

various stages of our life, but not be concentrating on watching us “grow up”. As humans, our

memories do not come to us in chronological order but instead flood our brains and come at the

most random times. A song or a smell can trigger a memory of the past. I wanted this photo essay

to be in a random order to represent that. As Kuhn explains, “Family photographs are about

memory and memories: that is, they are about stories of a past, shared (both stories and past) by a

group of people that in the moment of sharing produces itself as a family”(401).

Composition

This original picture is one of the only true candids in this photo essay. For that reason, it is my

favorite. The original photo shows my brother and I in our backyard on our swingset swinging

together. My right hand is around his shoulders as if I am trying to keep him in place, and to keep

him from falling off the swing. Conners head is being thrown back, his eyes are closed and his

mouth is open. My mouth is also open as if I am screaming. We both look so joyful. The back of

this picture tells me in my mother’s handwriting that this photograph took place in July of 1999. I

had just turned 6 and Conner was 2. Fastforward to December of 2014- 15 years later. The Flynn

family no longer has a swing set in our backyard. Even if we did, there is no way both Conner and I

would fit on that swing. Therefore, to remake this picture we had to go to the local park and each

sit on an individual swing. I put my arm around Conner, but you would never be able to tell

because even on the swings he is towering over me. Again though, the open mouthed grins we

wear in the remake of the picture were not faked. We are genuinely laughing at something my

mom had said. Even though Conner and I no longer swing, we find other places to hangout and

ways to have fun. Even though I do not have to put my arm around him to keep him in place and

safe, today I do make sure he texts me if he has had to much to drink and needs a ride, or spend

hours on his couch in his room and listen to his girl issues and try to offer advice. A week ago I sat

with him all night and helped him revise his college admissions essay. No matter how old we get,

and no matter what trials we go through, at the end of the day Conner will be by my side with a

huge grin. Regardless of how much time passes he will always be my 2 year old brother and I will

be holding on tight to him to make sure he does not fall off the swingset of life when it starts to go

too fast.

In Understaning a Photograph, Berger explains “A photograph is a result of the

photographer’s decision that it is worth recording that this particular event or this particular object

be seen”(292). Some pictures in this photo essay have a reason that any viewer might be able to

guess : When Conner and I are dressed in white we were both in our aunt’s wedding, when we are

wearing Christmas hats the photo was for our Christmas card. Other pictures, such as this one

though did not take place on any special day. However, every photo in this essay has one thing in

common- they were all taken by my mom for a specific reason. In each of these days of our lives

my mom had seen something that she had wanted to document. Berger goes on to say, “A

photograph whilst recording what has been seen, always and by its nature refers to what is not

seen. It isolates, preserves and presents a moment taken from a continuum” (293). Although a

photograph documents a memory, the photograph is also about what is not actually seen. For

example the photograph of Conner and I swinging does not show the fact that my cousins were on

the swings next to us-something that is now significant being as how we have not seen them in

years due to a family feud. It does not show that I had just got back from my biological Mom’s

house and she had been the one to cut my bangs so short in a way to get back at my Dad.

Photographs are all about the memories and stories that are associated with them, leaving it up to

the viewer to come to their own conclusions when they look at the photgraph. Kuhn states,

“Photographs are evidence, after all. Not that they are to be taken at face value, necessarily, nor

that they mirror the real, nor even that a photograph offers any self-evident relationship between

itself and what it shows. Simple that a photograph can be materical for interpretation-evidence, in

that sense: to be solved, like a riddle; read and decoded, like clues left behind at the scene of a

crime” (395). The thing that is so amazing about photographs is that they can mean something

different to every single person that views it. I hope that this photo essay caused the viewers to

think about their own relationships in their life and how they are growing and changing. I hope it

caused some to take a step back and realize how fast life passes because in the wise words of Ferris

Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss

it.”

Works Cited

Berger, J. (1974). Understanding a photograph. In A. Trachetenberg (Ed.), Classic Essays on

Photography (pp. 291 – 294). Leete’s Island Books: New Haven, CT. [pdf]

Kuhn, A. (1991, 2003). Remembrance. In A. Wells (Ed.), The photography reader (pp. 395 – 401).

New York, NY: Routledge. [PDF]