Digital Young

I was this weekend at my husband’s parental house. I found the family photo album. The two parents and the two children, a family portrait in these pictures. I want to talk about two radical changes that modernity and technology brought: first, the way of stocking photos; second, the personalization of photos.

The first phenomenon is global, only that in Romania, the process of changing has been slower. I talk about passing from physical photos, on a paper support, to a virtual one, on an electronic device (computer, cell phone etc). As you can see, pictures were from paper. You all remember this. But what stroke me was that my grand-parents keep pictures in a plastic little bag, which became brown or yellow due the time passing, and my parents kept pictures in the family album. There are two different ways of stocking memories unscripted on a piece of paper. Now, even the way that pictures look like obviously evolved in time. In the 20 or 30s of last century, when my grand parents were young, pictures had a brown-white color specificity. In the time of my parents, it was black and white. Colorful pictures appeared lately. Polaroid was a picture format too modern and very few people had this kind of object, mostly those who were living abroad and came to see their relatives during holidays.

So, this is an example for the first type of pictures that I talked about.

Black and white picture.

And Polaroid…

Maybe you will say that your family saw the same evolution in photography. In Romania, it was a little bit slowed down. And the way to stock pictures…

Yesterday…

My grand-parents’ style of stocking photos.

Today…

I think that the question is what mental changes cause the new technology? At which level can we talk about changes? It is true that something has been lost: the touch of pictures, the sensation of the paper. And still, this is the very essential transformation that new digital era imposes, if we talk about writing or taking pictures. Another change might be that having a photo camera about everywhere, we do not take anymore pictures where people had to pose, as in an old movie. Another one might be that stocking pictures on your computer, they can be moved really easy: on a cd, on a usb etc. These are maybe the functional advantages of the new media. But how are we today different of our parents or grand parents? Is there something that we can talk about? I would title a possible research From plastic bag to Photo camera. I would just mention one transformation: photos become something that can be changed easily, transformed, you can do whatever you want with them. They lost some characteristics as physical object, they are not so static and passive anymore. Maybe that’s why our parents sticked them in a family album, on a page. Because pictures were something static, passive, also formal, serious. I think that this is what they lost by transgressing on a new media.

Now, let’s talk about generation pictures. My childhood, until I was 9 years old, I spent it under communism. Being a child, I was not touched by lack of food or lack of heat. I thought that was normality, enjoying my childhood. During communism, there were very few people having their own photo camera. Therefore, the majority of people, when they wanted to make pictures in order to have family memories, they were going to a photo studio in town. For example…

The occasions to take pictures were when a child was born and all the family was reunited, or, more specific, important moments in their child’s evolution as a primary school student. Communism had implemented a specific school culture: when children were in kindergarden, pre-school system, they were made soimii patriei (country’s falcons), meaning that they acquired a new status, recognized by the school, parents and by the State. The investiture was made through a formal and serious celebration, with parents, relatives, teachers, principals. Children were also getting a new uniform: blue skirts or pants, orange shirts, blue ties and blue little hats. In primary school cycle, there were two sub-stages: 1st – 5th class, 5th – 8th class. When passing from 4th to 5th class, the child was passing from a system with a single teacher to a system with more teachers, each science with its own teacher. This new stage in a student life was also marked with a whole ritual; we became pionieri, in an approximate translation, pioneers. Our uniform changed; girls had dark blue dresses and, underneath, white shirts, and boys had a dark blue costume (pants and jacket). Something like this:

This was the investiture ceremony uniform; our daily uniform was a different one:

Another important event in a student life was the Santa Claus communist version celebration. All the class prepared a little show, where students were singing songs, reciting poems. After that, each student came to Santa, recited another poem and received a gift. Now, I said that communist version of Santa Claus was a different one from Western reality; we had Mos Gerila, which meant, in an approximate translation, Old Man Freezingly. Here’s a picture from this ritual:

And… same scene, another town, another family, another child, this time, me

And another ceremonial marked through pictures: 8th March, International Woman’s Day. In our country, it took another shape: Mother’s Day. And there were made special cards, with a little poem and child’s picture in the left part of this card. Here’s a sample:

Same scenes, but other families and other children. All our generation lived the same moments and the same events. We are the generation with the same presents received from our parents (a little piano, puppets), the generation who had the same objects, events, uniforms. And still, we were pretty different. These pictures lacked improvisation, capturing the moment, and most important, personalization. When I see now my colleagues’ childhood pictures, they have the same colors, represent the same events and scenes.

I truly think that things that I talked about here could be a perfect subject for an anthropology research. There are so many ideas and social, cultural transformations that could constitute for a student in anthropology a perfect field. Well, I am expecting for your suggestions or proposals.

How do we define ourselves inside a generation? When do we become aware of the fact that we were a part of a generation? What do we say about “our generation”? These are questions that I want to try and answer through personal memories during communist period. My hypothesis (proved through several discussions with people from the same generation) is that during communism, as we all have access to the same objects and our parents purchasing the same items, our childhood was populated by the same “stuff”: same puppets, a little toy piano etc. In function of social dynamics, other items “appeared”, like colorful pencils and nice smelling raisers. As little children, I and my friends really had the same objects. I want to see how you think objects around you and what role do they have in your life.