Blog

25
Aug

A Childhood Portrait of My Mother

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My mother as a little girl. She was always a tomboy, since she grew up with two older brothers and a neighborhood full of boys. She had curiosity and a desire to build and create things, combined with a strong maternal instinct. It has made her the perfect mother to me. ~shared by @lauraclayto View […]

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24
Aug

Old Family Photos are Time Capsules

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Family photos are time capsules. Houston, Texas. 1959. One of my grandfather’s Kodachrome slides. My Dad is on the left. Dad grew up and became a professional photographer. And so did I. Although my grandfather worked for an oil company, he clearly is where we got our talent from. It’s just amazing to me seeing […]

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23
Aug

Vintage Photos and Memories from the Big Easy

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Let’s look back to the Big Easy for some Southern stories. This is my beautiful Grandmother as a young girl with her Dad in the late 1950s at the Roosevelt hotel in New Orleans. Just look at those outfits and the awesome hairstyles! The Roosevelt has a long history and is a beacon of luxury […]

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22
Aug

Why Saving Our Old Family Photos Preserves Our Family History

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My Grandma C. passed when I was just five years old, but my aunt has a lot of these glamour shots taken of her by her friends around Salt Lake before she was married. She was ill for the last 10 years of her life, and I only remember a shadow of the person I’m […]

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21
Aug

Who Will Hold Our Memories in Their Hands?

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What will we have to show from our digital existence? Who will hold our memories in their hands? I recently discovered this portrait of my grandfather, Anthony Victor Flint, circa 1940. I was mesmerized. To me, it’s a clear indication of the significance of the photographic medium and the need to preserve our memories so […]

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20
Aug

How Revisiting Old Photographs Helped a Daughter Grieve the Loss of her mother

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I found myself deeply overwhelmed by the need to keep even the most mundane of my mom’s belongings when she died this past February, photographer Jennifer Loeber says in her artist statement. Instead of providing comfort and good memories, they became a source of deep sadness and anxiety and I knew the only way I […]

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19
Aug

My Grandfather Took a Selfie Before Selfies Even Existed

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A ‘selfie’ of my Granddad in the mid-1920s in St. Louis, before selfies even existed. Here, my Granddad, Charles Edward “Eddie” Niesen, sits for photo booth portraits. This boy with a bright smile was the baby in his family; he was born the same year that his oldest sister eloped with her husband. I think […]

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18
Aug

How many memories can be stored in a single photograph?

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“I believe in the resonance and staying power of quiet photographs.” –William Albert Allard My Aunt Beth and her friend in rural Mississippi in the 1960s. These Kodachrome colors and memories never faded for me and my family. But this photo is about more than Kodachrome and kids on summer vacation. It evokes endless summer […]

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16
Aug

An Adventure Led my Grandfather from China to a New Life

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Once, there was a young cowherd who lived in China. Times were hard and food was scarce. When he was 9 years old, he saw a ship setting sail to far-off lands. “Tell my mother I’m going to Nanyang (Singapore)!,” he shouted to the townspeople. He went onwards to Malaya (Malaysia), during its golden age […]

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15
Aug

Why We All Have a Deep Need to Know about our Family History

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“But there is a deeper need yet…to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember; the […]

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