The Power of Pictures

Photos play a big role in your memoir: Among other things, they help you, the writer, remember details. But they can also help you recognize big stuff, like your memoir’s theme.  

Don’t believe me? I discovered something profound in an old photo, something I’d never noticed before, and it propelled me into writing my soon-to-be-published memoir.

Dig out a key photo related to your story. Take a few minutes to examine it and jot down what comes to mind.

Let’s start with the easy stuff: 

• When was the photo taken?
• Why were you in that place?
• What did you do there?
• What was the weather?
• Who was with you? If a main character in your memoir, note his or her relevant characteristics: physical appearance, quirks, tone of voice, attitudes, values, talents, endearing qualities, maybe even odors.
• What emotions does the photo stir up?
• Jot down sensory details: What did you smell? What did you hear? Taste? Touch/feel? See?

Next, dig deeper. Look at those photos with fresh eyes. Read between the lines. What’s lurking (or percolating) under the surface? What are the vibes? Is there an elephant in the room?

• How did the event or place or that person in the picture change you?
• Or prepare you for the future and make you the person you are today?
• Or warn you?
• Or inspire you?
• Or make your dreams come true?

But don’t stop there. What’s the bigger picture?

Does the photo symbolize or capture the theme in your memoir? That is, the central idea or meaning or message. A memoir’s theme is about the big picture. Ask yourself, What is my story about?

For a few days, think about your photo and what it represents. It might hold more significance than you now recognize.

Years ago, as keepsakes for my kids, I compiled photos of our family’s three years in South America, and the stories that went with them, and snapped them in three-ring binders.

I assumed I had tied everything together and that the story was complete. But I was mistaken.

“Sometimes you think a story is completed

and all wrapped up.

But then, decades later, something happens

and you realize that it’s not done yet,

it’s still in process.”

Lawrence Kushner, 

Invisible Lines of Connection: Sacred Stories of the Ordinary

Decades later, I looked at one of the photos—one of my favorites, one I’ve framed, one I’ve used in speaking engagements. That day I looked at it and saw something I’d never noticed before.

Why had I never seen it?

And suddenly I knew there was much more to my story than what I’d included in the scrapbook for my kids.  

I had based those stories on letters I’d written to my parents from South America, but those accounts were just the facts. Just the surface stuff, the day-to-day events.

Here’s what the snapshot showed me: It foreshadowed stories that made ongoing international news—events that touched our family and friends. Events that changed lives, forever.

The photo begged me to write additional stories, much bigger than the ones I’d already written, and make them into a memoir.

Come back next week and I’ll tell you how that ordinary old photo took my three-ring binder accounts and transformed them into my soon-to-be-published memoir, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go!

Between now and then,

look at a couple of photos pertaining to your memoir.

Perhaps you, too, will find clues that shout,

“Your story is not yet finished!”

My photo of Mt. Kilimanjaro as seen from Kenya