I've Been Looking So Long At These Pictures Of You




Entry 1

Long ago, it must be
I have a photograph
Preserve your memories
They're all that's left you

       -from Bookends by Simon and Garfunkel



Leiney at S. Lucile Street, June 2004.

From the time that we got our first digital camera, until the kids were in their early teens, I took more digital snaps than most can gauge. Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of images and videos exist that no one has ever seen. I would take the pictures and videos and transfer them to a hard drive, but the vast majority went unreviewed, unseen. Not a person. My kids have never asked to see them, seemingly happy with the several thousand pictures that Jenny and I posted on Facebook, or that I forward to them from some cloud photo repository. Thinking about it, snapping all those images was really an attempt by me to stop time, to capture in a bottle every fleeting moment of the kids childhood, of our family life. Given the futility, maybe mama should have taken my Kodachrome (although I prefer Polaroids). away. 99 percent of the videos have never been seen and there are hundreds or thousands.
Ocean Shores, 1979.

 As a denizen of antique stores, I have seen thousands of pictures, their backgrounds faded to sepia, the blank faces of the portrait subjects, surrounded by numberless other images without a soul, or someone to claim their family. This won't be the case with these digital images. We won't walk into second-hand stores and see nameless, unknowable faces stacked in bins or sitting in corners gathering dust and cobwebs.
 


Abby and Me, 2013, E. Gwinn.


Leiney 2011.

Abby 2011.



     Los Tres Amigas, Cedar River Trail, 2010.
UFCW Hall, SEA Negotiations, 2015.

 
Buddy Love, undated, circa 2012.

Baby Abby, 2005, Renton home.
2015.





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