Exposed...

I've had a couple people ask me the following question from time to time: "Are you ever concerned that your son's image will remain in cyberspace, with no way for you or him to reclaim it or his privacy?"

I know no one has meant any disrespect...I understood their concerns. The question definitely makes a clear point: Should I have second thoughts about posting my son's image where strangers can lurk? Should I not be more protective? I have asked myself these questions many times. In fact, every time that I have posted a picture of my son I have wondered that.

I have not come up with any easy answers, but nor have I given in to any fear of posting his image or sharing our world. I continue to do so with some abandon. Obviously I have posted pictures of him in the bath, and his little naked bum. I had the thought, at the time, "is this sharing too much, with too many?" Perhaps.

There is much that I could say about the various arguments that I have had with myself about the ethics and the safety of posting his picture. I have thought about this long and hard, and although at the end of the day I don't have an answer that addresses all potential questions and concerns, I have come to the conclusion that I am acting within reasonable bounds of care when I put my pictures and feelings out there. Those are arguments for another post, maybe, someday, or for discussion in comments.

I read a little something the other day that hit me so hard....that explains everything more than I could even place into words. It was a piece on Photography that read.....I'm quoting this paragraph now...

"In his Camera Lucida (Reflections on Photography), Roland Barthes distinguishes between the studium of a photograph, those elements of a photograph that provoke an interpretive (cultural, social, political) response, and the punctum of a photograph, the element of a photograph that punctures, or wounds – that which provokes an emotional response in the viewer by establishing a direct relationship between the viewer and the subject of the photograph."

This made such good sense to me. I "got it." I myself seek out photographs of other people’s children for this "punctum." I post pictures of my son for this "punctum" because these photographs establish a relationship. I seek out those relationships as someone who enjoys photography, and as mother. I seek the poignant moment of understanding, the punctum, in photographs of other mothers’ (and fathers’) children. I look at those pictures and imagine that I see what those other parents see. I admire the curve of a cheek, the sweet, innocent smiles, and I imagine that that was the detail that moved the photographer, in the moment that they clicked the shutter. I imagine that I see, in your photographs, for an instant, your child, through your eyes, and I am punctured by that moment, that fleeting moment, of connection. In that moment, I feel that I understand you, because I understand, now that I'm a mom, your love for your child. I recognize our shared experience of intense, inexpressible love. I want to share my own experience of that inexpressible love with you, with someone. So I post my own pictures.


I want you to see and feel the details that I cannot adequately put to words. I want you to feel my love for him and to smile at his expressions of intense joy on his face. I want those luscious, out of control curls on the top of his precious head to grab at your heart and squeeze it, hard. I want the details of his face to call to mind for you every time you ever kissed the cheek of your little one. I want the photograph to "puncture" the distance between us as parents, different people with different children, different lives. I want you to see him through my eyes, to know my love for him, to recognize it as your own. I want you to be punctured.


Some people may worry that I expose too much, that we expose too much. I worry about this, too. But I also feel, deeply, that the exposure – the candor, intentional and accidental – is necessary for the connection that I always want him to feel, for the connection I want my distant friends and family to feel with us and the connection that I can share with others like myself. I feel, deeply, that I would lose something, that we would lose something, if I kept myself and my son (this unique being who is also and always an extension of myself), concealed from view and never a bit transparent and vulnerable.

And so I write, and so I share.......