I am slowly restoring old family photos.
It's amazing how quickly things change...
From my mother's childhood she has a small handful of fading photographs, mostly old 6x6 black and whites and polaroids. They are cracked, yellowed and littered with 50 years oily finger prints. Most of then are portraits outside of her homes holding pets or standing and posing with siblings.
My brothers and I have a few shoeboxes of 4x6 prints of our first bike rides, camping trips, Disneyland,
Halloweens, birthdays and random snaps from disposable film cameras... They are all damaged from Cheeto dust and tape from attempted scrap booking. There are no negatives to be found, just one of a kind images rotting away.
The children today have terabytes full of almost every day of their lives, 30 different angles of a first tooth, an entire birthday party documented from start to finish, every time they eat a cupcake, take a poop, scrape their faces, wear new clothes... There are multiple exposures incase an eye is closed,
a hand is not right, a belly not sucked in. They are posted on blogs, facebook, multiples printed out and
sent around for Christmas. They are never ending.
I appreciate all of the steps photography has taken but
have found I love looking through old images...
The closed eyes
the missed expression
the blurr
when it was too expensive to practice the perfect forced smile and
the corrupted colors from the decay of elements (not stamped on by a iphone app).
I love the two photos of my brothers as kids.
These are the only ones of them that day and all we have is the one moment.
5 comments:
i'm sorry you still don't know me, but gosh. YEAH. this is life. this is the value of the old time snapshot. thank you.
Warm and fuzzy post.
excuse me....I am an older brother too. so you have THREE older brothers...but you are thinking about 2 of the 3 which is ok since those photos are awesome. Thank you mom.
Jessica,
The picture of Jimmy got me teary eyed. Thank you. I will try to print it so little Jimmy can have a copy.
i recently fell upon your blog. you are refreshing and real. and this post was MARVELOUS! thanks for your thoughts.
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