Magnet Photos: 2020 Nonfiction WINNER
WORDS BY REBECCA STEVENSON.
TRIGGER WARNINGS: Mention of family death.
I think we’ve all got those funny photos that we put up on our fridge. You know the ones; the cute ones from when we were really little, probably from a school photo day or when we were mucking around with paint. All across our fridge are those photos that tell a grand story about ourselves, like puzzle pieces that build an image of our lives, picture by picture. Together they can help mould the tale of where we’ve been and show us the humans we’ve become.
It’s weird, at times, to look at those previous versions of ourselves, every single day as we go to get something from the fridge, and yet we somehow manage to completely forget about them in the process. Through the ins and outs of the busy lives we lead, it’s easy to forget that those wide, toothless grins were once us, too.
By now you would have heard the quote ‘every 7 years you’re a different person,’ because of the rate of our cells replacing themselves. While that isn’t factually correct, I still think the sentiment applies to those 7-year-old photos. While we may not be biologically different, the difference visually looks like night and day; it’s a complete transformation. We grow up and learn to the point where we’re shaped into something almost unrecognisable to those childhood photos. Like that almost correct fact, most parts of us are totally changed, and yet there are still aspects that never fade, looking more like an alternate version of yourself with only a few pieces that match up. But this strange, other self, can whisper a million forgotten stories to you, if you’d just listen.
These magnet photos act as a monument of a place and time, they’re a tiny glimpse into our history, of a person that we can never be ever again. It’s a snapshot into a particular life experience, to a story you can share with others, but never quite capture the gravity of everything in it. Even you, yourself, probably couldn’t recall everything that happened. Did that first family house have yellow curtains, or maybe they were brown? Whatever happened to your favourite doll that you would bring with you in every car ride? Either way, it’s impossible to get the whole picture from these magnets we plaster on our fridges.
Our brains are a funny thing, we often remember things very differently when we recall events, but these magnet photos are evidence of our experiences, even when we can’t remember anything about that time. They help us to remember what we’ve long forgotten and put together the life we didn’t know we had. They reveal the people we once knew, the places we’d been before, or the things we used to wear and love. They’re all captured and saved, wrapped safely in between those frames, or in that photo album, or on that fridge. They’re there to remind you of where you’ve been and to keep track of where you’re going. They unravel the mysteries of the lives we’ve lived.
My old family fridge finally gave in and broke a few weeks ago, so for the first time in 20 years, we’ve had to properly rearrange the magnets on our fridge and pick fresh photos to put up on the new slick surface. It was strange at first, to see our old, 90’s fashioned photos on the fancy fridge—which even has a panel to display the temperature. It’s truly a wild invention. Anyway, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the things of my childhood starkly contrast the new technology of today, and it got me thinking about how much time has passed between then and now. How, in a couple of years’ time, maybe we’ll no longer see the need to print out our photos and display them, or maybe a new digital invention will overtake this simple one. Will that essential drive to see an outward reflection of ourselves remain so important to us?
I remember that for a period of my life, I hated taking photos, or even being in them, because I thought that person in the photo didn’t reflect the me that I had in my head. Sometimes I wouldn’t even want to look up at myself in the mirror. I knew physically, that’s how people saw me, that that’s what everyone else looked at, but I still couldn’t help that pang in my chest when someone would post a group photo with me in it. So, I just got used to ignoring them, keeping my head down as if I was walking through a street with sketchy characters. Until, eventually, with the help of a few people in my life, I’d finally learned to look up, and accept that version of myself.
I think we’re all multifaceted people, and while I still do see myself slightly differently, I can accept the fact that those little people, staring back at me with those great big beady eyes on the fridge, are also me. That the same wrinkled chin when I smiled back then is still a part that makes me me even now when I smile. So now, whenever I look at those photos, it’s from an altered perspective, more like how an older sister would see their beloved younger sister, that of pride and joy. Today, I see the potential that glimmers in the eyes of the younger me instead of the failures, and I know the future me will do the same with the photos I take now.
I’ve travelled around a bit in my life, not a whole deal more than the average person, but still a fair amount. I’ve lived in four different towns/cities, two different countries, seven different houses, gone to seven different schools, and have visited a few dozen places by now, so I’m kind of used to the idea of nothing being permanent. All of the towns/cities were so vastly different. Wyalkatchem was the first place I grew up in. It’s a small town in Western Australia with a whopping population of 500. All the photos I have from it consist of dead yellow grass, vibrant red dirt, and a big backyard with four feral children in it that looked like something straight out of Lord of the Flies. But I still have fond memories of that place that weren’t captured on film, like the hot air balloons that were for a festival, I think. They filled the sky with a mirage of colours against a beautiful orange sunset. I remember sitting on top of our decrepit slide to get a closer look at it all and stayed out there for hours.
There was a circus that came to Wyalkatchem, too, full of lights and wonder. I remember being so mad because I was too young to go on the teacups, but my sisters got to go on it. Then there was that time I captured a green frog. I have no clue where the nearest body of water was in that place, but up until that point I’m sure it was the greenest living creature I’d ever seen. These are all vague snippets of this distant place, I honestly couldn’t tell you which memory came first, but you’d have no idea about any of these things based on the few things we’ve captured in our photo albums. That’s the beauty of photos, our memories bunny hop, from one thought to the next; if I didn’t even have a picture of that dodgy slide, who knows if those air balloons would ever exist again in my mind.
When my family moved to Adelaide, we lost about half of everything we owned in a storage container that we couldn’t afford to pay for. In it, were a bunch of things from my childhood, my piano sheet music, my toys from Indonesia, my broken bracelets that I used to wear every single day, etc. Even the old video tapes we had were gone. But in the end, it forced me to let go of focusing on the past and live in the here and now. There’s a fine line that we cross whenever we go somewhere. I know I for one am always caught between trying to enjoy the moments, and taking out my camera, because we always want those special moments to stretch and last for a lifetime; but they can’t—we shouldn’t force everything to, otherwise you run the risk of missing out on the present. We simply can’t capture everything, like the way the massive tree near the train station sways and sings in the breeze. Or the way the waves at the beach crash over the others in a million different ways. Or the fact that every time we look up at the sky, it’s arranged into another completely unique painting that only we, ourselves, can get a particular image of from where we are. Those moments are seemingly unimportant, and yet they carry so much beauty in them. There just isn’t enough storage or time to try and capture all those moments, but they can still hold a significance in our hearts.
All I have to remember those items that once held such an important part in my life is my memory of them. That faint impression of them in my hands, and when those memories resurface like a breaking wave, there’s a joy that’s sparked from them. I remember being bitter that we lost half of our stuff, blaming a lot of my problems on it. But at the end of the day, we’re not going to die with our stuff; we die with the knowledge and experience we’ve gained from them. Of course, it’s still important to have photos to help us remember what we might otherwise forget, but don’t get so caught up in it that you let life slip between your fingers. There’s a balance to strike between both worlds, because sometimes, those photos are the only thing we pass on to others.
Those fridge photos are all we have left of people. They’re the last image of our friends and family, or maybe of a person at school that you’re never going to see again. They’re the pieces of the people that we’ve left behind in our lives.
My dad died earlier this year, so it was interesting going through all of the photos we have of him. We got to be selective about the side of him that we show on the fridge and to guests that may walk by and see it. We have a small collection of pictures that represent his life, and the monumental moments that he’d thought to keep a photo of. I think he represented the older generation of ‘men’ well: never sharing the hurts and trauma’s he faced in his life. From the stories my aunty had told me, it seemed like I was learning more about who he was when he was alive, after he was dead. These photos took on a whole new meaning, they shifted slightly in my trembling grip as I sorted through them. He looked like a different version of himself than the one I’d seen before. It was like reading a new edition to the story of the man I’d known all my life. These photos seemed to morph and create a new significance, adding to the chapters of his tale. I finally got closer to finding out who he really was, through them.
I think most people, once their loved one dies, would opt for a more formal photo to represent them to everyone who passes by. To me, though, this idea of displaying them at their ‘best’ somehow felt wrong; it felt fake, in a way, to represent him differently to how he lived his life. So now, whenever I go to grab a glass of orange juice from the fridge, I’ll always have his memorable grin staring back at me as he holds a massive chicken drumstick in his hand.
These magnet photos that we display on our fridge should be a place of reflection and a collection of all the things we’ve loved through the different points in our lives. Through the highs and lows, through our growing and stretching, these are the keystones to remind us of that long journey we’ve walked already. Even though there are so many unknowns in the world, and there’s a lot more growing to do, it’s good to learn from our past experiences and let it shape us into who we are today. Because what are we without our pasts? We shouldn’t throw away those moments and forget about them, because, at the end of the day, forgotten experiences are a waste. So, the next time you see that awkward school photo and cringe inside, know that, without that person, you wouldn’t be the you staring back at them. That person hanging up on that magnet, whether you like it or not, has helped you build your future, and created the very you who’s here today.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
What initially sparked the idea for this piece was when my family got a new fridge because our old one had finally carked it, and we had to pick and choose which photos got to be put on display. It really had me thinking about the nature of photos and memories on a deeper, more existential level. It kindled an idea in my brain about their significance in my life, and how they can piece together the fragments of our lives that we may forget later on down the road. These magnet photos are a visual and literal snapshot of moments in our own personal history.
A lot can be told from the photos we choose to put on the fridge beyond just the contents of them. They are a stylistic mirror, a rich treasure trove of how we see ourselves, how we want to show that ever-growing story of ‘us’ to the current people in our lives, and, of course, to ourselves.
EDITORIAL NOTE: This article has been reuploaded and was originally published in 2020.