Since the invention of the digital camera, there are seldom any occasions that are not recorded in photographs. This past Christmas gathering I took over 200 hundred photographs. I always plan to go through them, pick the best and delete the rest. This is a very difficult task because when it comes to photos of children, are there any bad ones? I do have one rule which helps me, and that being if even one person in the photo has his/her eyes closed or some weird look his/her face, off to the trash can it goes. My daughter, without fail, goes through the photos while they are still on the camera and deletes the ones she does not like of herself. I am okay with that because I do the same thing. These days it is harder and harder to not delete all photos with me in them. When did I get all those chins?
In my early teens, my brother who was a teacher, brought home a camera, taught me how to use it and gave it to me. I think it was called a Brownie, but I could be wrong. Somehow I managed to find money to buy film and pay for mail away developing. I loved it! Christmas followed with a photo album from the same brother. Now, I understand why he became a teacher.
I would like to say that all the photographs I took where amazing and that I showed some artistic brilliance, but that would be untrue. I remember taking a photo of one of my brothers, shirtless and flexing his muscles. I have one of another brother looking pretty dapper, grinning, and swinging an axe. Why, I am not sure. Nonetheless, they are amazing in that they instantly recall the occasion.
Five years ago I went to my parents' homeland, the "old country", Poland. To fully describe how incredible the experience was is impossible. I met relatives whom I had only seen in photographs. With every letter that my parents got over the years, there were photos included. I had brought many of these photographs with me and shared them with my relatives and found out who was who. Many people in the photographs were no longer alive, but their children and grandchildren were.
I have one photograph which had a particular importance to me. It was a professionally done photograph of three beautiful girls, sisters. One of the sisters, was wearing a dress which was once mine which my mother had sent in a parcel to them. I remember the dress as it was a little frillier than what I usually wore. I got it as a hand-me-down, and then we passed it on. I met that girl who is now a grown woman, a little younger than myself. Together we sat and looked at the old photograph and I took a new one. This one had only two sisters as sadly, the oldest one had just recently died of cancer.
In a small village, I visited several homes of relatives. In one of these homes lives a young woman and her family. It was here that I was once again reminded of the importance of photographs. This young woman, my aunt's granddaughter, brought out some photographs. I could not believe my eyes! They were photographs sent by father circa 1953. I could barely believe my eyes - there were photographs of tractors, harvest, a variety of brothers and, me! I was three. The most amazing thing of all was that each photograph had a short description on the back, in my father's handwriting. Through tear blurred eyes I read what he wrote, and the one which sticks out the most in my mind is: "This is our first Canadian born son." I could feel the pride in my father's note. And then I thought, how excited he would have been to know that I was there, in Poland, visiting with his family and looking at these photographs with them.
Of course, I took photographs. Hundreds of them.
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