photographs offer me comfort for the future
Hi everyone I know this is a little rough but I'd really appreciate some feedback on one of my NYU supplements! Here's the prompt: What intrigues you? Tell us about one work of art, scientific achievement, piece of literature, method of communication, or place in the world (a film, book, performance, website, event, location, etc.), and explain its significance to you.
I lift the lid off of an old, deteriorating cardboard box. I peer inside, into a mass of faces and places. I reach in, and pull out a single photograph, the edges slightly worn and yellowed from age and constant handling. I gaze at it, into the content faces of my mother, my father, my sister, and my younger self. I pull out another photograph, and another, and another, until my lap is blanketed by the resulting pile of pictures, each one a glimpse into the past, a piece of an experience that has come and gone, a reminder of those long since forgotten. As I sort through them, I laugh at a photograph of my four-year-old self, parading around in a Pocahontas costume, while I am nearly drawn to tears by a photograph of my uncle who passed away of cancer. For this reason, photographs never cease to amaze me. They capture instances in time, freezing and preserving everything that occurs within that moment for years to come. Whether the moments they embody are seemingly priceless or common, each time I look at a photograph, it invokes emotion in me. The photograph helps me reminisce on older, and often simpler, times. No matter how many years pass, or how much the people or circumstances around me may age or change, my boxes are kept away from the rest of the world, allowing the pictures within them to remain untouched and therefore, to me, that much more beautiful. Through my reminiscence, photographs offer me not only a window into the past, but also comfort for the future.
