May 11, 2004

Grandma's Camera

There is one example I always point to when people ask me what can they do with old pictures. It's what my favorite blogger James Lileks did with his grandma's camera

    One night in Fargo after everyone had gone to sleep, I poked through an old bureau in the basement. It had spent most of its life at my Grandparent’s home on the farm in Harwood. One drawer held some photo albums - the pages were cracked, falling out of the book, and half the pictures were gone - they'd become unglued and dropped to an indifferent floor decades before. But a few could be pried loose, and I took them back to Minneapolis to scan and preserve. The more I looked at them, the more I realized that they were absolutely inscrutable - aside from my grandparents, the people in these pictures are unknown to me. Chances are I stood in many of the spots where these pictures were taken, drove across the land where the farming scenes were photographed. Were it not for the faces - my grandfather’s face, which stares back at me from the mirror sometimes when I am tired, or my grandmother’s face that looks very much like the beta version of my Mom - these would mean nothing, aside from some sort of historical value.

    But I do know the faces, and that makes all the difference. You, of course, do not - yet you might find these interesting nonetheless. It’s a small portion of a record a young farm wife made of her times with her camera. ... She wanted these things to be remembered. And so they are.

Posted by Jill Fallon at May 11, 2004 9:56 AM | Permalink