Photography as Technology
The overarching theme is the miracle of photography, but within that theme are intricately individual thematic webs all reaching back to the medium itself. In the Victorian period at the dawn of the introduction to the new medium, the full weight of the miraculous power of photography is made palpable. What is taken for granted today as an activity linked to communication through the invention of the cell phone camera is revealed in all its primal glory to have been nothing less than an truly life-altering invention. Photography in the Victorian era carries all the novelty of the smart phone, but because the technology evolved at a snail’s pace, it is a novelty which lasts for decades rather than the year or two between upgrades that is expected of all technology today.
Photography as Memory
It is easy to forget in the age of photography that before its invention there was only one way visually catalog memories: artwork. Most people are not equipped with the requisite talent to draw representative images and although oil portraits abound in museums around the world, the average family could not afford it. As a result, despite those crowded museum walls, of everyone who was born before photography was invented, almost certainly less than 1% are now remembered for what they look like. By comparison, one must certainly imagine that at the very least 50% of the population alive at the moment this is being read will remain forever alive as a result of photography being a memory of them. The Victorians were among the most diligent keepers of daily diaries and journals. It was really the first generation (primarily due to increase literacy) that made the idea of keeping memories alive a viable and important aspect of life. The novel explores the way that photography as a means of preserving memories became intertwined in a way that helped spread the utilization of the camera.
Photography as Metaphor
Photography becomes an elastic and flexible metaphor for recording life. In addition to bearing witness to the arrival of a new medium, the Victorian Era also introduced new concepts to the novel. Although British novels had been popular in 1700’s, the novel as we recognize it today really began with the Victorians, two of which feature prominently in the narrative: Charlotte Bronte and Charles Dickens. The Victorian novel is one notable for telling the life story of a character rather than just focusing on one brief period of dramatic conflict. In the same way, Sixty Lights purports to tell the life story of Lucy Strange though it contradicts the template by cutting Lucy’s life short.
The structure is also not representative of the period in that it moves back and forth through time and even allows moments of extra-temporal time travel by Lucy. It is structured more like a series of photographs—literally and figuratively—that offer snapshots of moments in time, which can then be arranged to tell a story. Of course, a story told visually with snapshots is also an accurate description of a film which is simply photography given movement, like individual experiences given moment constitute a life lived.
