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 […]
Every family has some. They may be dusty or damaged by water; they may look worn or well-loved. They’re diamonds in the rough! Whether you’ve got two or two dozen, there’s nothing quite as alluring as old family photos that need some serious TLC. It’s like discovering an antique that needs some sanding, polishing and refinishing to look […]
Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt. – Susan Sontag My father’s parents. I only knew Kay, but from all accounts, Harlan was a disciplined, hard-working, loving, family man. Recently, my father’s side of the family has been on a tear, sharing photos like this one […]
This portrait is so important to me and my family. My aunt restored it from the original negative. It was taken in 1970, when my family still lived in Cambodia. This reminds us of life in Cambodia before my grandmother fled to America with her children, seeking a new life and an escape from war. […]
My mom in 1955 with me and my sister. She was a true Texas girl. Born in 1931 during the Great Depression, she reached her teen years during WWII. She was well-acquainted with doing without. But here, in the mid-1950s, she must have felt she was blessed with everything: a new family, a man she […]
While helping my father, @fotogene32, clean out his house to move I came across lots of his old photos. The house, in Whitestone, Queens, belonged to his parents before he lived there, and this was taken nearby, at Fort Totten, by the Throgs Neck bridge. It’s my grandfather, Anton, and my sister Nina in 1966 […]
My mother Gladys in Brooklyn, circa 1940s. She was born in St. Marks Hospital in NYC in 1922 and grew up in a household of extended family members, even sharing a bed with a maternal aunt until she was 16. My mother suffered from a variety of medical issues throughout her life, some due to […]
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