Photography simulates what was once present but is now gone. It gives life to the dead. Immortalizing by taking photos is one of the best ways to remain in the memory of posterity.
People from the very beginning were dreaming of resurrecting those who have died. As of today, we are helpless with this case. All signs on the sky and Earth tell us that it is impossible to resurrect a dead man. I do not believe if it is possible. Thus, the only way to become immortal is to properly raise one’s child or create something. Thanks to creating and leaving something, we can be remembered by posterity.
Undoubtedly, raising a child is one of the ways thanks to which we can be immortalized. Still, we are not responsible for our children’s doings. We do not have a guarantee if our son or daughter will help us in the process of immortalizing. We should count only on ourselves in terms of becoming immortalized. In fact, no one ever can assure us that we will be remembered for a long time.
Taking photos is one of the ways (both for the photographer and model) to become immortalized.
Thanks to photographs, we can rememorize, recreate, and somehow feel past events, doings, and even people. In one of his interviews, Frank Zappa said that he does not care whether he will be remembered by posterity. I sometimes wonder whether he was sincere with this statement. I believe that by producing broadly defined art (whether it is music, paintings, texts, or photographs), every artist, more or less, wants to become famous, both throughout his life and probably after death. Except for adequately raising children, I do not see any other way to become immortalized than by creating new things. In this way, photography, indeed, can bring life to the dead. I love reading and analyzing Taschen’s books. When I do it, I see that ideas born in the minds of geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci, Alfred Hitchcock, Salvador Dali, Stanley Kubrick are still alive and will be remembered for many centuries.
