Family of Photographs
Browsing James Fallows ' post from China about the death of this father and his syblings' discovery of some never-before-seen pictures of his parents, led me to reminisce about those moments when the normal flow of life is unexpectedly punctuated by photographs. Last month, on the last day of Thursday's Photo One class at ICP, when we were supposed to be displaying and critiquing each others' final work, John brought out a sheaf of black and white photographs of his grandmother and grandfather on their wedding day in the 1930s. He'd discovered them in a trunk he'd rescued from his mother's apartment. From a faded manila envelope he withdrew delicate traces of his personal history to share with us. And gingerly spreading the thin curled paper, tentatively at first - not wanting to damage the fragile surfaces - we found ourselves unexpectedly immersed in memories that weren't our own. He wanted to know how to scan the pictures without damaging them, but...