There’s one glaring problem with the July 4th picture that hardly anyone has ever realized, yet can’t be ignored. If Jack is the reincarnated caretaker from the Overlook’s past, or for that matter if he has ever been there in a previous life, than the picture had to have been taken in The Overlook. It may say “Overlook Hotel July 4th Ball 1921” but the party depicted in the picture quite simply isn’t in any room of The Overlook. We’ve seen all the big rooms in the hotel and there's absolutely no indication of another one either in the movie or the novel. Stanley Kubrick even tells us in the Michel Ciment interview that it’s not The Overlook “…. they were in a photograph taken in 1921 which we found in a picture library” and his using this was no mistake. It’s such a brilliant yet simple deception. Stanley Kubrick makes us believe the photo was taken in The Overlook by what’s written on it. But it’s an obvious lie that the audience believes without question. Anything can be written on a picture but that doesn’t make it true. Kubrick aficionados who insist Jack is Grady can jump up and down, throw tantrums, spit blood, or spin their heads like Regan from the Exorcist, but it will not change a thing. The place depicted in the picture is simply not The Overlook. Stanley Kubrick planned it this way and this picture cannot be used as proof that Jack has ever been in The Overlook before in this or any other lifetime because of what's obvious, the picture has been taken somewhere else. The “somewhere else” Stanley Kubrick may have had in mind is an interesting thing to ponder though.
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