family projections

Flusser insisted that photographs project possibilities, rather than “capturing” or “recording” or “reproducing” anything.  So all those lovely shots you may have of yourself as a very young child, smiling at the camera–or not — should not be considered evidence of anything that actually happened so much as early projections of you by … your parents, no doubt, although aunts and uncles, siblings, friends, or even you yourself may have been involved as well. All of them were intimately, “inextricably” connected to the device, the camera and all it entails.  These are projections of the apparatus, which is responsive to many pressures, assumptions, drives, memories, ideals, fears, etc, of which the human photographer will probably be only very partially, very occasionally aware.