We underestimate the value of our printed photographs these days.
My wife, Risa, and I have lived in the same house for almost 46 years. Recently, we had our home painted. We have photos strewn all over the house. Most are now on the floor as we decide whether to put them back where they have been for years or tuck them into albums. I glance often at the readily visible ones, but the effort to hang them seems daunting.
When our children and grandkids come to the house, I notice them searching for the missing photos. They are riveted by the bulletin boards still hanging, plastered with pictures of family history.
At Graff-Pinkert in Oak Forest, we have collected the photos of a business lifetime, many of which have been buried on a soon-to-be-vacated mezzanine. We will be moving the company to a new building in a few months, and only the most precious ones will be retained. I look at some of the photos every day, and they energize me.
A few weeks ago, our former office manager during many of my formative years at Graff-Pinkert died at 95. I loved being around her. I searched for a photo that would bring her face to my memory and featured it in a blog. It is still out on my sloppy desk, and I relish looking at it during a busy day.
I have a variety of photos from recent vacations lying fallow on my iPhone. They have less meaning than the old black and white pictures gradually going back up on the walls of my home. The photos which make the cut to reach family collages, bulletin boards, and precious refrigerator inches are a lifetime retold. I virtually never pry open an album, but the eye-level photographs are viewed daily. They nourish me.
Another photo has been sitting on my desk of my daughter Sarah and her husband wearing Cubs garb with a sign saying “The Best Thing Ever.” They brought it to a World Series game at Wrigley Field. They had flown in from California to take advantage of tickets given to them by a friend. The ecstasy of that photo taken on a chili October day will live forever in my memory.
These kinds of photos punctuate my days.
Not all of my valued photos are family ones. For years in our office, I had a famous print of readers combing the shelves of a bombed-out London bookstore in 1941. Amongst fallen walls, after a German air assault, they pour over the titles.
As I dealt with the petty problems of a used machinery dealer, I would look at that photo of cherishing ideas amidst ruins. It was a picture of never giving up. Despite war and decimation, ideas live on.
Images too.
Preserve your photos. Hold on to life.
Question: What is your favorite photo?
5 Comments
Thanks for a good time.
Mine caught siblings and parents laughing around grandparents’ table, dad in dungarees and t-shirt after a summer day grinding tools at GE, mom after a day raising that gang in the upstairs and back yard of her parents’ house, grandpa eating spuds and grandma behind the camera. 1964.
I have a photo I love on a bulletin board. It was taken after a softball game in a local league. My friend Jerry, and two younger twins I had known since they were three, and me, of course. We all had hot dogs in our mouths resembling half used cigars. We looked like joyous softball winners should look.
I think we won the league championship that year. Don’t ever lose that photo.
Jerry, your memory may be imperfect but I love the comment.
We don’t get photos any more now in the digital world like we did when we took the film to the drug store to get the film developed. It is all stored on the computer!!!!!!!!!! The computer gets old and the hard drive goes bad, and the pics are lost forever.