Gallery - Tracy Chalmers

Emotional Recognition and Identification and the Process of Word Choice

Through the process of writing my first draft of my memoir I was often fraught with frustration for finding just the right word or series of words when strung together that could accurately translate and reflect the emotion I was experiencing and trying to interpret what was still haunting me as I wrote. Often, the words I ended up selecting to put down on paper were the closest I could find to accurately describe what was deep-seated in the fibers of me.

Just as silence is a communication tool so too is a picture. They say a picture is worth a thousand words and without a doubt many of these images below conjure up in one’s imagination much more than what you see at face value. Some of these photographs may relay a message or an emotion, a look on one’s face that words cannot quite grasp. They may show innocent joy, pride, happiness but they also show exhaustion, biding time, impatience. They tell of what may be just lying underneath the surface. They also keep secrets.

Embedded deep in each image are the situations surrounding it. Situations no one other than those in them know about. What brought us to that moment in time? What happened just before and directly after the snapshot was captured? What message in the expressions on each of our faces are we really trying to transmit? Or hide?

Much of this has stuck with me through the years. I have delved deeply into this and so much more, in the pages of my manuscript. For some things, there just are no words.