The title story of A Life on Paper, which first appeared in translation in AGNI Online (Spring 2006), has managed to remain oddly relevant in our age, when taking snapshots is easier than ever. In a strange case of life imitating art it probably didn’t know existed, Munish Bansal, an accountant from Kent, has taken pictures of his two children every day fro the last thirteen years, the Daily Mail reports (showing a selection of the photos). I was staying at a friend’s house in LA last year when I got an email linking to this story, and shared it at the breakfast table. Soon thereafter my friend left for work, and his wife prepared their newborn for the daily ritual of having her photo snapped and texted to Daddy at the office. Apparently showing it to his coworkers was part of the ritual too.
When, bemused, I reported this to Gavin Grant at Small Beer, he said he did the same with daughter Ursula. Most recently, I was stunned to find unexpected echoes in the Banksy documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop. Its main character, Thierry Guetta, assigned his mania for compulsively videotaping every last mundane minute of his life to his mother’s early death. While by no means an exclusive or even unpredictable motivation, it is one nonetheless shared by Kathrin’ father in “A Life on Paper”: the event that drives him over the edge, and causes him to ruin his daughter’s life. » Read the rest of this entry «