I never had the chance to meet my grandfather. He died a few years before I was born. I am named after him, Claudio Majorana. All that I know about him comes from stories my father told me since I was a kid. I know that my grandfather was an engineer and Sicilian Politician. But he was also a great photographer.

Five years ago, as a birthday present from my father, I received a box of my grandfather’s negatives. They had been stored in the attic of our family’s country house for 50 years. When I received the box, I didn’t have a concrete idea of how much family history I would discover inside. So I kept it stored in my closet for a year before actually deciding to take a look inside.

When I finally opened the box, I discovered treasure. There were over 100 rolls of negatives, all shot by my grandfather between 1940 and 1959. I saw so many family events such as a relative’s funeral in 1940, my father’s first day of school, an Easter lunch.

On June 1, 1968, my grandfather shaved his head and took these pictures in a photo booth. These quick snapshots capture the personality and energy of a man I never met, a man who passed along his passion for photography to me. And now, I am getting to know him better and better, simply by looking at the thousands of photos he captured during his lifetime. ~shared by @claudiomajorana