The thing about my profile picture I realised with a shock the other day is how quickly it ages. I put it there because it's one of the few respectable photos I have taken of me in black and white, taken for my husband's fiftieth birthday.
I notice it from time to time and wonder, have I changed much?
Clearly I have but it's subtle.
I've aged.
Tonight I realised the subtlety - all ten years of it.
Tanya Sutton, a good friend and previous nanny to our children, took this photo, the last one in a series.
It was in the days before digital. She'd been photographing all four of our daughters for a photo collage for Bill's fiftieth birthday and used the last shot on me. That was ten years ago.
Maybe it's time to put up a new self representation, but I've yet to find one.
2 comments:
Ah but your photo is only wee so we get a suggestion of what you look like but that's about it. And that's fine. I still carry a photo of my wife in my wallet that must be close on twenty years old and that's how she'll always look in my head. Occasionally I look at the old woman I now live with and think: Who the hell are you?
Talking about photos, I need to get a new one done. And probably today. I've been using a painting of a photo of me that's five years old and even in that short a time I've changed quite a bit. I'm working on 'rugged' but it's not quite happening yet.
So your image is from a painting, Jim. I can see that now.
My daughters change their profiles regularly, almost annually, the younger the more frequent their image change. This must have something to do with aging, I'm sure.
When I was young I longed to look older. Not so now. My mother at ninety still prides herself on how much younger she looks. It seems an age old obsession.
I look forward to seeing your more 'realistic' image, Jim, even as it will change in the blink of an eye.
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