My little family and I are in the dead middle of moving and while it’s literally just across the alley, it is so stressful. Admittedly, we’re also renovating the kitchen and only upstairs bathroom at the same time because we’re clinically insane, so that certainly adds to the stress. During all of this, my grandmother is coming to the end of her life and so we’re looking through boxes and boxes of family photos. My mom is one of six children, so it’s fun to look back and see all my aunts and uncles when they were younger but it’s also so sad because all these photos have just been sitting in a box in the corner of a storage room for decades now. I found a photo of my grandmother when she was in her 20’s, circa 1950, wearing a dress she’d made that won the County Fair and I burst into tears. Where had this photo been all these years? How I would have loved to see that photo every day; just walk by and notice it once in a while or get to tell people it was my grandmother. It’s actually a really well composed photo too… clearly talent runs in the family!
Now in planning my new home, which will hopefully be our family home for several decades, I’m so excited to have space for a family photo wall. I have heaps of photos of my own son and our family, because I use him as a little model when I get new sets, but also because he changes so drastically even when I don’t see him for a weekend. My husband travels for work and sometimes he’ll be gone for a week and then come home to find a baby that isn’t a baby anymore. Photos have become a very important part of my life, especially as an only child and now that my closest family members are getting older.
All of this is the reason I moved from digital galleries to creating artwork. I want you to have images of you and your children like I have of my mother and grandmother. Another photograph I found was a professional portrait taken of my grandmother and her two siblings, probably around 1942. It’s folded neatly into a little folio and remarkably undamaged. When we’re at the end of our lives, I don’t want our family to be clicking through my phone looking at images on a tiny screen, I want what I got: a loving family gathering marveling at images of a happy life lived.
Get in the picture. Capture the moments. Showcase the memories.
