I LOVE Photographs!

I love taking pictures. I love preserving a moment or a feeling or a thing. I love capturing colors, textures and shapes.

But I also love other people's pictures. Maybe it's my voyeuristic nature. I love seeing the art of photographs but I also love getting a glimpse into other peoples' lives: vicariously experiencing their vacations and family events or the growth of their children.

Historical photographs mesmerize me. I am entranced by old pictures of my ancestors and those of my family. They represent a time I'll never know and a culture I will never really understand (both the bound feet of Chris's Chinese great-grandmother and the hard-scrabble face of my great-grandparents on their farm).

But even when I don't have a horse in the race and the photos are of people unrelated to me and mine, I still feel drawn to them. I want to know who they are, what brought them to this moment and what happened to them after. I stare into their faces and wonder what makes them laugh or cry.

I look at the things surrounding them: the rugs, furniture and gewgaws and gimcracks and wonder which of these things matter to them.


Vintage professional photos are interesting because they strip away the personal from the setting and allow me to concentrate on the faces. Because the subject had to sit still for a long time (compared to today's instant cameras) and because portraits were expensive and not to be taken lightly, they almost always look very serious. What were they like when they were at home?

I love restoring old photos, removing the ravages of time and revealing their original appearance. It's also very zen to clean one pixel at a time. When I magnify the picture, I can see details that I would never have seen with my poor eyesight. It allows me to concentrate on each portion of the picture and get a clearer image of the whole.

These are pictures of Chris's mother's father as a boy. You can see that I eliminated the scratches, tears and spots so you can concentrate on the face rather than the white blob on his nose.

But, of course, once I see the photograph I have to find out as much as I can about the person so then I start delving into genealogy. And that's a never-ending process.

I hope that I am preserving my family's history and making it more widely available. But I also just get a kick out of it.