Aurora Soosaar

Fer r i s W h eel Carrie Teti

It was the end of a beautiful day at the beach, and the sun had just set over the boardwalk. People walked and biked along the boards, buying t-shirts and herm it crabs. Seagulls gathered to steal the french fries and funnel cake that had been left behind. All the little kids, including m e, rushed to get on the rides. I was three years old at the tim e. M y dad and I got on the Ferris wheel, and we rose to the top. I was a little scared, but I calm ed down when I looked out from m y passenger car and saw the beautiful colors of the sky. The ride was going sm oothly, but suddenly, it stopped, right when we got to the very highest point. I looked down to see crowds of people directly below m e, all of them pointing up. Even the seagulls laughed at m e as they flew by. I cried. To calm m e down, m y dad sang a song. ?Im agine m e and you, I do. I think about it every night. It?s only right, to think about the one you love, and hold her tight. So happy together!?We sat there, 90 feet in the air, for over an hour, until the firem en arrived. They extended their ladders as far as they could, then clim bed up the Ferris wheel to rescue us. I cried in relief when I finally m ade it to the ground. W hen m y dad told m e that story, I truly believed it. I rem em bered being stuck in that Ferris wheel overlooking the Ocean City boardwalk and needing to be rescued by the firem en. For years, whenever I looked at that Ferris wheel, I experienced it again in m y m ind. But it never really happened.

Artwork by Aurora Soosaar

Ph otogr ap h s Sadie Form an M y phone case is tiled with photos of m y fam ily, friends, and places I?ve traveled. The tim e I went to Peru on vacation with m y fam ily, visiting and hiking M achu Picchu, I breathlessly willed m yself to the top of the m ountain and used the new digital cam era I had gotten for m y birthday to snap a photograph of the Incan ruins below. Or the tim e I knelt next to Karm a, m y fifteen year old black dog. M y sister snapped a photo at the perfect m om ent, when Karm a?s tongue was sticking out just slightly in a way that m ade it look as if she was posing for the picture. The tiles are colorful, fulfilling a green and blue color schem e across the back of m y phone. A picture of m e at the beach next to one of m y fam ily surrounded by trees. A picture of m e snorkeling in crystal blue water next to one on the sum m it of a grassy m ountain. I?ve had this case for a few years now and over tim e, it has been scratched up and the corners have begun to chip. But still, I love m y phone case because of its originality, its personality and its individuality. I love it because it consists of m em ories that I can look back on and rem inisce about. Photography has been used for centuries to capture precise m om ents in tim e. W hile cam eras used to be very difficult to obtain and were only used by few, now they sit in our pockets, easily accessible with an app on our phones. The first cam era was called the Cam era Obscura and it was invented in 500 BC to study optics, later dem onstrating how light can be used to project an im age onto a flat surface. The first physical photograph wasn? t taken until 1827 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce but technology of cam eras and photographs m oved rapidly thereafter. Although the first cam eras were revolutionary for their tim e, they were flawed and very com plex. The process of creating a photograph took eight hours while the im ages quickly faded away. They were also very expensive and only available to very few. Photography has com e a long way since then, and now it is used in m any ways, both recreationally and professionally to docum ent im portant events and convey m essages. Som e people say, ?A picture is worth a thousand words.?This certainly holds true about a photograph, capturing a snapshot of em otion. Every im age holds value, whether it's capturing an im portant m om ent in history or a m om entous day in som ebody?s personal life. Photographs share a narrative, each one with som ething different to tell. Som ething different to share with its audience, m aybe just one person looking back at an event or potentially a group of people trying to pull a m essage out of a photo. I look back at photographs taken during various tim es in history and am able to see and feel the em otions captured by them and observe the difference between life in the past com pared to m odern tim es. It is also interesting to look back at photographs taken during significant m om ents in m y life like m y Bat M itzvah- being able to see photos of m e in the Rodeph Shalom Synagogue reciting m y haftorah, trying to swallow m y nerves as m y fam ily and closest friends watch. The great thing about a photo now is its sense of perm anence: you can always look back and rem em ber the events that took place surrounding a specific photograph. Unlike a m em ory, whose tem porary effects escape you, running away as you're left grasping onto som ething you don? t rem em ber anym ore, a photo is forever. Forever rem inding you of your cupcake-them ed birthday party when you turned seven or the tim e you acted out the play of H igh School M usical with your fam ily friends, playing the role of Gabriella. No m atter how m uch tim e passes, you can always look at an im age and be transported back to the exact m om ent it was taken. These events can be shared som eday with kids and grandkids, passing down fond m em ories to younger generations. W henever m y grandm other visits, she always brings an envelope filled with old photographs with her, stained with tim e. Like a tim e capsule, the m om ents rem ain frozen in tim e. M y m om recalls a story to go along with each im age. The tim e she dressed up as a dog for hallowe?en and went trick or treating around her neighborhood 2 20

in Hershey, Pennsylvania when she was eight. Or the tim es m y grandm other would dress m y m om and her two sisters up in m atching outfits for a photoshoot in their backyard, their forced sm iles indicating their im patience. Each photo shares a narrative, snapshots of m y m other?s childhood that revive forgotten m em ories. Although photography can bring back old m em ories and is also very practical, there are m any downsides associated with photographs as well. Growing up in the era of social m edia, it som etim es feels as though we need to docum ent every m om ent of our lives or we will m iss som ething. In reality we are m issing things when we are stuck on our phones taking pictures, videos, editing and posting to various social m edia accounts. There is a skewed perception that photos are superior because they are tangible and can be looked back on. In actuality, we value m em ories m ore than physical photographs and by taking photos of everything, we have lost the value in capturing a m om ent through m em ories. Additionally, the perm anence of a photograph that has been seen as a good and powerful tool for so m any years, has becom e an unfortunate side effect. Once you post som ething on social m edia, it will last forever, even if it is deleted, it will always exist som ewhere because of the perm anent digital world. A saying I think about som etim es is, ?If you don? t have a photo, did it even happen??I have dwelled on this a lot because we live in a tim e where cam eras are in our phones and we always have access to them , everyone feels the need to capture each m om ent instead of living in the m om ent. We don? t spend enough tim e in the present, instead we capture the present to look at later. Taking pictures and videos of our friends and fam ily, saving them as m em ories when we aren? t actually there to rem em ber them in the first place. There is a fine line between having a photograph to rem em ber a good tim e and having a photograph that replaces a good tim e.

Artwork by Em m et Sun