Remember the class photo?

Somewhere, in a box at the back of a cupboard, I have a few old school photos. They are a bit squint in their grey cardboard backing frames and I can’t remember all the names of everyone there, but I do remember the smell of the gym hall where the first picture was taken and I remember how much I loved my P4 teacher, who gave me an extra jotter to write my own extra poems and stories in. I also remember the easy-flowing, fast-sticking homophobia of my P6 teacher.

Teachers, eh? I’ve been the teacher in quite a few class photos myself over the years, an annual ritual in my day job at school. Who knows how many households have those old photos stored away, the snapshot of me too, in those boxes and cupboards, kids who are now adults, trying to remember the names of the faces and the smell of those halls.

Which is why I was so drawn to this picture – Washed and Combed – by Cordula Marks Venters. She created this image based on an antique school photo, but substituted the heads of the kids with a collection of different viruses and bacteria. None of us have really been the same since Covid, have we? In any case, I completely love this drawing and I wrote this poem to go with it for the exhibition, Pathogenesis. It fits with the theme, but it’s also about photographs of young people more generally – that freezing of time and what looks like endless possibilities and potential ahead. When we look back at our own childhood photos, do we see that and wonder what happened to get in the way? Is that just me? Here’s the poem…

Washed and Combed

Sit still, there, for you must know
The tiniest of movements, a twitch, a cough
Will be frozen forever in this moment
Where you show the future who you are now, 
Before you become all you will be

How is it, that time keeps us
Quarantined in memory and sealed in these names?
The labels attached to our existence:
The pupil, the teacher, the watcher and the watched
Survivors, telling tales of the fallen

And put your best face on, children
Washed and combed and ready to go forth
Out, beyond this photograph and far and wide
Remember how it was, to be so young
When days have been harvested and gone

“Washed and Combed” by Cordula Marks Venters

The header image of the camera for this post is by Juan Moyano.