A WEDDING CEREMONY, CHAPTER 11, by LISBON WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER
When the wedding ceremony at Lisbon’s St. George’s Castle is over, the photos of joy multiply
Happiness forever
There. The wedding ceremony is over and they are married, the state representative has already saved the documents and, she too, congratulates Rita and Dylan, now husband and wife documented and approved for registration that will go down in the annals of history.
The wedding photographer enjoys the pictures that come out of those happy faces and fulfills their purpose before the family and guests take over with their kisses and hugs laden with wishes for happily ever after. There is always another point of view or, even, to resume one of them with, now, different photographs because life has already changed, fulfilling what was long wished for there.
Between the smiles of already done and the relief for the end of the formal ceremony, the wedding photographs don’t stop changing each time my lens notices them.
Memories from different points of view
Then, well, it’s the euphoria. The restraint gives way to loose and festive joy, those who love them want to show them in kisses and hugs how much they want and wish them to be happy and have good lives, in such a way that they don’t even realize that the wedding photographer is there taking all those emotions with him, in copies that will become, in time, the only reality that remained of those moments, except in the memories of each one, but from completely different points of view.
It’s funny because I realized, even now, that any of the visual memories that each of the intervenients has, or will have, exclude themselves. In the memories that each one takes of that day, including the bride and groom, none see themselves, only what was appearing before their eyes, that is, the others. That’s the only certainty they have that they were there.
The photographer’s transformation of moments into photos
To solve this, the wedding photographer was invented, but I never found out by whom. He is, among all those present, the only one capable of gathering on the same plane of memory, the photograph, all those who throughout the day are acting in counterpoint or filling in scenographies necessary to the context of the day.
Without it, that event may, one day, be no more than a certainty of date but only a faded memory in the memory of most of those who were there. Without it, the photographs that could have been taken would never see the light that shows them to all the eyes that look at them.
Only he can transform moments composed by those at the wedding into photos that he knew, at the right time, to take so that they will be shown whenever necessary to bring them back to the memories.
At least that’s what this wedding photographer thinks, unless I am wrong and must redo my theory.
