Her five grandchildren call her “Bajka,” which in Serbian means fairytale. My grandmother was born in Belgrade in 1943. As a young woman, she studied art history and later began working on national television as a producer and director of a series that explored Serbian history through music. During the war in Serbia, after her […]
Meet my grandfather Oscar’s rowing team; these young men won the rower’s cup in 1924, Manor House, Tonbridge School, Kent. We called my grandfather ‘Tatita Oscar.’ He went on to join Grace & Co., thus ending up in Bolivia and Chile, where destiny would bring his son Martin, my father, to meet my mother Paula. […]
Mom and her Mom, Vietnam, early 1950s. We left Vietnam in early 1975, when I was just 14 months old, and my grandparents stayed behind. I didn’t see them again until they emigrated to the United States in 1984, when I was 10 years old. My ba ngoai (maternal grandmother) was by that point in […]
As I continue to sort family photos, I find surprises tucked away in the oddest corners…like this one. I love this snapshot of my mother and my grandmother on the beach, probably on the Chilean coast, where we are originally from. My mother and my grandmother were fashionistas, my mother in the New York cosmopolitan […]
The gift of memory and storytelling is something that should always be held dear, and recently I’ve really begun to treasure these stories that my grandparents tell – even if I’ve heard them a hundred times – to have them told by Eugene and Alice themselves is pretty great. My family will always remember Grandpa’s […]
My 101-year old grandmother, known to all as “Bubbie,” is truly a force of nature. For as long as I can remember, my grandmother has always looked like she stepped out of the pages of a magazine. Although her perfect beehive hairdo has been her defining physical characteristic, when I think of my Bubbie I […]
Your story started before you. My grandmother Dorothy was born in 1937, the first of nine children born to JD and Gertrude Johnson. They lived in the small West Texas town of Dougherty, where the colored school closed during cotton season so the colored children could work in the fields. My great-grandmother, Gertrude, wanted a […]
My mom. Probably about 6-7 years old, in the 1940s. She passed away last year from Alzheimer’s. My grandfather took this photograph, and hundreds more. He was an avid amateur photographer. I’ve inherited boxes and boxes of medium format photographs, Kodachromes, 16mm movies, 8mm movies, and hundreds of prints chronicling my mother’s life and the […]
Before heading out to photograph a wedding last weekend, I held my grandparents’ wedding slides up to a window and marveled at images I had never before seen. I was inspired by the wonderful imperfection of them all. There is something about two farm kids dressed in their best, grinning like children as they leave […]
As time passes by and you look at portraits, the people come back to you like a silent echo. A photograph is a vestige of a face, a face in transit. –Henri Cartier-Bresson This is my favorite picture of me and my mom. I experienced a freak accident at six months old and my mom […]
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