Lament for a world without photographs

Today, Wednesday, August 11, 2021, I just took pictures with my iphone of some old photographs I came across recently. I was actually looking for something else and I found a forgotten scrapbook of my youth, my 20's, with some photographs I had taken of New York City with my little Pentax 110. What a camera! It was very small, you could fit it in your pocket easily, and very versatile - you could take standard photographs or panoramic. I loved that camera, but, of course, inevitably, it was replaced by a digital camera. I don't know what happened to it, I may have even thrown it away (perish the thought) in a desperate attempt to unclutter my life.

I am a keeper and saver but NOT a HOARDER which seems to be one of the new 10 sins of the modern world. Fat and Hoarding have taken the place of other sins which go unremarked or while criminalized, not scorned by public opinion, such as venality or lust. There are no shows about "My Porno Life" or "my money Grubbing Life" only My 600 Pound Life, and Hoarders.

Anyhow before I go down a rant road, let me get back to the subject of the beauty of old photographs. I thank my mother repeatedly for enriching my childhood with a wide array of magazines which I am sure I have mentioned in my posts many times before. We subscribed to Life, Look, House and Garden, Saturday Evening Post, National Geographic, and other magazines that came and went but didn't have the saying power of those stalwart companions listed above. I grew up in a more reading world. We also had newspapers and both of my parents read the magazines and the newspapers and in fact, as I recall, nearly everyone I can remember read the newspapers. In fact, nearly everyone I remember from my childhood had magazines - they were everywhere!

My first introduction to a WOMAN photographer came about with a LOOK cover by Margaret Bourke White, who was also a War correspondent during WWII. I was thrilled to think that a woman could be a professional photographer though I had no idea, even as an adult, how that could come about. How did those women find their way through the labyrinth that led them to a career in photography. I know at least one found her way through the WPA via the FSA. That stands for the Federal Works Progress Administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, ans subsidiary of which was the Farm Secrity Administration. Today you can go on Library of Congress web site in American Memory and see wonderful and beautiful photographs from the 1930's taken by Dorothea Lange and the many photographers eployed by the WPA through the FSA.

One thing circles around to another, and to get back to my topic, I was looking for photographs from my father's time with the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) of the WPA. My daughter had written an essay that was published in the Oxford American. The rights had just been released to her and she was thinking of adapting it. But I couldn't find those photographs, instead I found my own old scrapbook - literally a paper scrapbook with the picturs fastened in with those litle black adhesive triangles. I was 20 when I took those photogaphs, an impossibly long time ago. The photos have faded over time, and blurred. This gives them an even more beautiful and haunting quality I think.

It makes me sad to think so many photos taken today go to the Cloud or SnapChat, only to vanish like lightening bugs, gone forever, not to be gazed down upon every again by fond eyes looking at a world transformed. But maybe that's okay. People don't want clutter and I really get it. Sometimes I fantasize getting a storage shed built in the yard (another storage shed, to be honest) and putting all my stuff in it and making a streamlined existence for myself, one easier to dust and manuever around in now that I am old. But like some poor dragon trapped forever in a cave with its treasure, I could never be parted from my lifetime accumulation of jewels and rare magical objects. I have one entire wall from floor to ceiling of shelves containing photo albums, and a wooden trunk of small albums. The cameras are all gone, but the photos remain until I myself am gone at which time, I guess they will become paper waste as I doubt there is any place you can donate or store a wall full of photo albums and I doubt anyone in my family will want them, though so many are living history.

I fact, I am preparing to make a painting using some small and utterly gorgeous old sepia phtotgraphs that are 100 years old as my models. My cousin was about to discard them but sent them to me, and they are my father, and his two brothers as toddlers. I am calling the painting "Ghosts of the 100 Year Old Babies" and I plan to enter it in an upcoming group show at Eiland Arts, in the old Railroad Station in Merchantville. When I download my New York photos to the computer from my phone, I will post them on here if I can figure out the new format. Haven't done that in awhile!

Happy Trails, out in the world or in your memory - Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com