Saturday, January 4, 2014

Why Should a Photo Fade?

She sits on the subway, talking to her friend, and I can see what she'll look like when she's old. It's a talent I've had since I was a child, and I can see and hear it, plain as day: the jowls, the rasp that right now sounds sexy, but in a decade or two will just sound tired, the lines around her eyes.

There was a time when we were all younger than we are now, evidence of which we may find in photographs. We used to say of memories that they were like "faded photographs," perhaps more for the alliteration than anything else, but the metaphor may soon need to be retired, as the digital images we substitute for photographs never fade, the pixels staying exactly the same, forever, and no one born after, say, 1996 or so will have any idea what we're talking about.

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