I always dislike articles that start out with the words “Back in the day..”, because I know we are going to hear a slanted story about drinking from a garden hose and staying out until the street lights came on. That was all BS. Garden hose water tastes like plastic and always has. If I was not in before dusk, the mosquitoes were my best friends, so I went inside. But, for entertainment, I did read a bit, and I was an amateur photographer.
Dad would not let me use his photo equipment until I was an adult. So I had my own. I had a cheap 35 mm with a fixed 30mm lens, and several medium format cameras, an old Kodak Brownie (it was actually blue) and my prize, a Polaroid Swinger.
Now the Polaroid I rarely used, since the film was very expensive.(it was like 2 bucks for twelve shots) but was great for candid shots of my mother in curlers ( I was chased through the house for that one) and of course me and my friends clandestinely running naked.
We never thought of ourselves as nudists, and I wont speculate on what kind of homoeroticism was going on, but be it safe to say that we thought it was fun.
Back then, if you were to take film with nude photos on it to the local camera shop, most times they would not make prints of the offending photos. So you were left with making your own prints (Dad would have killed me if I used his dark room equipment for that) or sending the film off by mail, and three weeks later you would get the prints back, usually with the naked ones on top to show they had looked at them.(Mother picked up the mail before I got home from school, that would have been suicidal for me).
So the secret lives we all thought we led were documented on the little Polaroid camera.
Of course, when girls would take the same Polaroid pictures, and we got hold of them, we would pass them around like stone tablets and stare in awe at the improperly lit and blurry visage, that might, or might not be a breast and nipple.
Public views however could be more disturbing. Just after the birth of my oldest daughter, my wife and I were walking the street of our small Indiana town and on the street corner near the local drugstore we saw a Polaroid picture laying on the ground. A man had taken a picture of his erect penis, and his red tennis shoes below, and left the picture at the door of the drug store. My wife of course was shocked. I was amazed that his member and his shoes were the same size. But this was how technology was used back in the day…shit…sorry…in years past.
Technology and scandal are never far apart. If atomic energy could give us visions of naked people, there would be a reactor on every block. Along with that would be moralists decrying the decent of our society into decadence. Technology is a force for good, and in the wrong hands a force for destruction. In Africa, smart phones are being used to take photos and videos of people who are ill, and sent back to physicians in Europe to help diagnose the problems. Photo imaging has given the world a wonderful ability to see things that we would never have been able to describe, and transmit them thousands of miles. Photo imaging of all kinds is a good thing. On top of that, almost everybody loves taking naked pictures. So blame the operator, not the operation. Lets not be afraid of alchemy like the medieval were. Gold can be made, where lead used to be.
