Alcyon Lake for Lunch: My Favorite Part of Childhood
Allison M Wagner
Introduction:
Lunch at Alcyon Lake: My Favorite Part of Childhood. With this photo set I’d like to capture the excitement I had as a kid when my mom would say, “Go get in the car, we’re going to Alcyon Lake!” That, to me and my younger brother, also meant we were also going to McDonald’s to get Happy Meals, which was a special treat for us, given that we only ate healthy foods most of the time. Junk food and fast food were special to us. We would get our meals and happily hold them in our laps until we got to the park. We would pile out of the car and take over the nearest picnic table. I secretly fed the geese my fries when my mother wasn’t looking, and it was usually the fries at the bottom of the Happy Meal box. I liked to think that at that age, the geese were my friends. I loved watching them fight over the fries and squawk at each other: nipping and flapping their feathers. I loved watching the water ripple as they swam. I loved the cool breeze that danced across the lake, and I loved the fresh air that entered my lungs. This is not included in the photo set, but should be: My brother and I would walk to the pizza shop across the street and buy pizza dough, then we’d feed the turtles in the lake. We enjoyed watching them fight over the doughy pieces and that’s where my love for turtles came from. Everything about that place gave me peace. Even though childhood is looked at as though it’s an energy packed time, I want this photo set to show that childhood has peaceful, special moments too.
But Why the Park?
The reasons I chose these images are as follows. The images represent the peaceful time I enjoyed at the park as
a child. I chose these images because to me, they evoke a feeling of relaxation. The textures on the animals and trees,
the splashing of the water and the beautiful colors on the ducks show the vivid feelings I want to portray. At least for me,
I’m fascinated by colors and feelings, and I want the photo sets’ viewers to feel that same feeling. Right off the bat, I don’t
think that “childhood” is the first thing you think of when you see the photo set, until you get to the classic Happy Meal
photo. It then sets up the rest of the photo set to have this happy underlying theme that reminds us all of our childhood:
holding a happy meal box, and going to the park. An excerpt from Kelly’s article titled SelfImage, gives us a clearer image
of what I am trying to do with this photo set. “What lives in pictures is very hard to define...It finally becomes a thing
beyond the thing portrayed...some sort of section of the soul of an artist that gets detached and comes out to one from the
picture.” This goes to show that the same picture could mean things differently to each person. Take for example what
Dinah said in class on Thursday. She said that geese are terrifying and that Alexis’ close up photo of the goose made her
anxious. Now to me, when I look at my photos I took of the geese at the park, I don’t feel anxious, I actually feel the
opposite: relaxed.
I used my Gen 4 iPod touch to capture these pictures, and I’m kind of really upset about it. I’ve had the iPod touch
since high school, and all my important, special photos have been taken on it. Of course now the camera is outdated and
the newest iPhones have better cameras than some digital cameras. But that’s not why I’m upset. Right now I can’t afford
to buy a nice camera, and that adds to the importance of the whole piece. The photo set about the joy of my childhood is
taken on a crappy camera, which shows that adulthood sucks and the memories of the lake cannot be captured the way I
remembered it. To be completely honest, if disposable cameras were still a thing I would have taken them on that. I really
like disposable cameras, because they capture everything: colors, texture, they’re perfect. But even though the camera
sucked, when I was taking the photos, I was so happy. Getting a happy meal at McDonald’s to do this photo set made me
happy. Driving to the park with my happy meal made me happy. A bit of the same feeling returned, but gave me a new
feelings as to how to approach the topic as an adult. What adult do you see playing on a playground or getting happy
meals (without the presence of a child)? What adult do you see sweettalking the ducks and geese to get a better shot?
All of these things brought me back to my childhood. I felt like a little kid again. Susan Sontag in her article titled
Photography, says that “Photographs may be more memorable than moving images—because they are a neat slice of
time.” I really enjoy taking photos, I feel that they differ from videos in a way that Susan put very nicely: they’re a slice of
time. These photos take a slice of my childhood and recreate it in the present.
The Fries at the Bottom of the Box
With this photo, I wanted to take many different approaches to the point I was trying to make. In a previous photo
in the set, we are shown that the box we’re looking inside is a happy meal box from McDonald’s. I want to draw attention
to the hand in the bottom left hand corner of this photo, opening the box up for the viewer. This is really important. The
fact that the hand in the photo is wearing an engagement ring, shows that they’re no longer a childeven though the
chubby fingers look like a child’s hand. Being engaged to be married is that bridge between childhood and adulthood. Like
the idea that you’re always a child or young person until you get married, then you’re old and the furthest thing from
childhood. Looking into the background of the photo, beyond the box, you can see part of a car’s steering wheel, and the
shifter. And from that, you can see that the person taking the photo is sitting in the driver’s seat of the car. In comparison
to the hand in the photo, the box looks too small, showing the viewer that their memory of the box was a lot bigger when
you were a kid (which, in reality, is so true. Why is it smaller now that I’m older?!) The viewer then knows that whoever
took the photo is not a child, and is probably looking into the almost empty box with a similar empty look on their face.
This photo is almost like looking at your childhood: your childhood being that happy meal box, and then being
disappointed because you only have five fries left in it.
Going back to Kelly’s article SelfImage, she says “(The photo) finally becomes a thing beyond the thing portrayed.”
So, If this happy meal box is your childhood, and you only have five fries left, how upset are you? Your perfect happy
childhood is almost gone forever. I want this question to be posed as well. When we look at our childhood, is it empty? Do
we still have fries at the bottom of the box? What I’d also like to argue is the fries themselves. What do the fries
symbolize? Technically fries are bad for you. So if they’re bad for us, why are we upset about only having 5? Maybe as
we age, the number of fries goes down because we can’t remember everything about our childhoods. Maybe those fries
are our memories. When I was little, I used to take those fries at the bottom of the box and feed them to the geese.