Among the Negatives
I got a new scanner this week and it has a nifty and exciting feature where you can scan slides and negatives. As it happens I had some old negatives that I had scavenged from my grandparents collection years ago, when I was in charge of organizing the family photos to distributing them. Having the option to actually see these images as full fledged color photos for the first time is like going on an excavation of the most personal and exciting nature. Among the mysterious old negatives were pictures of my parents that I'd never seen. For you, this may not seem like a big deal, but for me, who NEVER knew her parents together and who has seen only ONE image as proof that they were ever a couple (besides the obvious example of my own existence) this is INCREDIBLE. It's half spooky, half thrilling to find them squinting and laughing together on a boat in 1970.Also among the negatives are pictures from the commune my family lived on. The fact that my mother's parents actually visited this ramshackle establishment in the fall of 1974 is amazing to me. Since the pictures depict many of the residents, I am imagining my grandmother in her groovy plaid pants and hush puppies among this shaggy dog group, snapping pictures, and trying to make sense of it all.
Some beautiful, quiet gems have emerged as well, like the one picture above. It's me holding my newborn brother Blake moments after he was born at home. I just love it. I have no idea who took it, but it's so beautiful it made me tear up the first time I saw it.
Then there are REALLY cool things like these photo booth pictures of my grandmother and her sisters in Kansas City in the 1930's:
Jeanne
Monica
Eileen
I feel like I've unearthed some lost trail of bread crumbs that were laid out years ago and forgotten about. I keep following them and what I find are surprising new views of the most ordinary of events. It takes everything I have to pull myself away and be able to go to bed at night. How could I sleep when there's a negative of a lost snapshot of my grandmother on her honeymoon in Seattle that my grandfather took? Who can sleep when your life emerges at you in such sparkling, pretty clarity?
posted by Summer Pierre at
12:52 PM
4 Comments:
I love old photographs of my parents and grandparents. They make me wish I had known those people at the time the photographs were taken, so I would know them better now. What kind of scanner did you get?
Fantastic!
My mom's father was a Navy photographer in WWII. He died when my mom was 12, so I never got to meet him, but I've seen some pictures he took during the war, and they were amazing. They all had "declassified" stamped on the back, with notes from censors.
Some of them were of camels and north African soldiers. Patton shows up in a few. So did my grandmother. But sadly, Granddaddy David was usually behind the camera, so we didn't get to see him very much.
I love this post. Made me tear up a little myself :-)
thank you for this post Summer.
I went straight out and got myself a scanner after reading this and have been scanning negatives ever since. I feel a big post coming soon :)
p.s. sorry about losing your template - I just went through a similar situation and rebuilt my whole blog. Argh but I am much happier now that it is done!
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