I’ve recently returned from a week in Chicago’s 20º winter, working with Doorstep Digital to scan and archive a collection of photos dating back to the late 1800’s. Our client’s father is facing serious health issues and hired us to digitize her family’s extensive collection of photos to share with him.
Scanning in and of itself can tend towards rote work, but choosing albums with the oldest images made for a wonderfully engaging experience. The rich sepia tones of these photos created from cameras in their earliest inception could hold their own in the Art Institute of Chicago’s photography collection. Their family is of German-Jewish decent and the women and men who held audience in front of the lens are thoroughly romanticized by this humble designer-turned-scan technician.
One set of eyes belonging to a young girl cast a particularly mesmerizing spell. I watched her grow from a curly haired, round faced, doll-like creature into a studious youth, on to a young bride and into motherhood. Her transformation was extraordinary. Her youthful beauty begat itself in her two daughters and as she aged into grandparenthood and even great-grandparenthood, I found myself very much smitten with her and this rare and wonderful slice of her life.
Her eyes, once framed with the supple, plump skin of childhood, now floated in the loose wrinkles of a wise woman who has bared a life rich with love, struggle, changing times, and growing family. How I wish I could hear her stories, know her details, her laugh, hold her hands.
When her youngest daughter was nineteen, she met and fell in love with a stunning young man of 22 years and soon they were married. They became adults together as their romance flourished in front of me. Photos are kept because they highlight what we want to see and remember, so I didn’t expect to see their hardships or strife, but I also didn’t expect to see this husband’s constant admiration of his wife. In every image – starting on a beach honeymoon, his body language spoke only to her, as if she were true north and he a dedicated mariner.
A testament to their love is the closeness of the family they created. We scanned through their babies, their children, their teenagers, the weddings of their young adult children, and their grandchildren. Their daughter was our client.
Time ebbs and flows according to our awareness of it. Watch a clock during dull or painful times and minutes become hours. Travel to a new country or sit with an old friend and the reverse happens. Any amount of time spent deeply engaged in a meaningful activity eventually becomes unquantifiable. Can this be true with an entire life?
What took decades to live and photograph, took just four days to scan and archive. From introduction to exit, from seed to bristlecone pine, from her eyes to mine, life plays out like waves of an ocean. Constant in it’s changing, beginnings and endings a part of the same motion. Comfort comes in the gratitude we acknowledge in any given moment.