Super 8 Selfie from the 1970s
It seems like every day there’s something new revealed. I don’t search quickly or I might be overwhelmed by the little details waiting to be uncovered, shallowly buried in the rich archive of super 8 film, audio letters, audio reel photographer interviews, thousands of negatives and contact sheets, letters, prints, journals and more that several generations of my family’s lives based in media have produced.
The most recent: a moment of family film where my Nana Libby, my mother’s mother, appears in a Super 8 selfie. Libby was the family filmmaker in the bunch, shooting starting in the 1940s as she raised her family in Chicago not too long after many emigrated from Russia. I discovered this invaluable (to A Photographic Memory, and to our family) cache of hours of Super 8 and got to see my mother moving for the first time since I lost her as a baby. I had no conscious memories of her so this filled in a huge gap in my knowledge of her.
A couple of days ago I was reviewing some of the digitized footage and discovered a quick moment of Libby filming herself in the closet. This, added to the self portraits of my mother’s an my own made a family portrait of three generations of photographer/filmmakers, as is shown in this image.
This was surprising to me as I always assumed I got my interest in photography, in capturing moments and memories, through my father, Brian Seed, formerly a Time Life photographer with an illustrious career in the field. I knew my grandmother as a homemaker, stay-at-home mom, and jewish activist, but now I know she might have been a closeted image maker whose talents were never realized beyond this family archive. There’s so much more to discover. As I continue to learn, I feel more connected than ever to my matrilineal line. Even if we can’t meet in the present to have a conversation they are speaking to me through the photos and films they saw year
MODERN SELFIES
Sometimes it can feel like there’s a new social media channel popping up every week. It’s virtually impossible to keep up.
Lee and I both feel the pressure to keep up with social media (and the kardashians…) but it is completely unrealistic to expect to do it all, and you don’t have to.
Deciding what social media platforms work for you and your audience and which ones don’t is a post in itself so we’ll save that for another day, but today we wanted to talk about a platform, which the TBP team has been loving lately, Snapchat.
Now we know that the introduction of Periscope has to some degree made Snapchat irrelevant but regardless we still think it’s advantageous for any blogger to be using snapchat for their blog.
Snapchat wasn’t invented with the intention of it being used for bloggers or public figures. Initially it was an opportunity for individual people to send shameful/fun/eccentric snapshots of their life to friends that were immediately deleted, preventing the ability of your network to share these precious moments. With the advent of social media, no image or video is ever safe so snapchat offered an opportunity to share without the fear of it spreading beyond those who you choose to share with.
And then “the story” was instituted and suddenly the game changed. Your “story” allows you to share with anyone who follows you, not just with those who you follow and choose to send your images/videos to. This meant that public figures could start sharing those less curated moments of their life without the pressure of it having to be “perfect” as is the case with most other social media platforms where the content lives on. Of course, there’s still the possibility of screenshots or people somehow getting access to these images/videos but for the most part, the pressure is off.
Always add to “your story”
In order for people who follow you to see your new snaps, you must add them to your story. It is likely that the majority of the people following you, you don’t follow back, which means you have to add your images and videos to your story in order for them to see them. You also have the option of allowing your followers who you don’t follow to send you snaps. There are creepers out there so careful with this function, but it’s also an awesome way to engage with your followers directly. Totally your call if you decide to use this function.
Adding to your story also means that your followers can view your snaps for 24 hours, rather than the 10 seconds a direct-snap allows.
