This is a photograph of my father Cees Moerman as a teenager in the late 1950’s. He was born in Amsterdam on 20 March 1946 and sadly passed away in Luxembourg in November 2008. My father and I had a troubled relationship. He was an alcoholic, and his drinking was eventually the cause of his […]
My Oma on a hike with her friend somewhere in the Alps in the 1930s, maybe late 1920s. Her name was Rosl Liebisch and she lived from 1915-2009. I don’t know much about that line of my family yet, but here and there I have discovered little stories. My Oma was friends with her employer, […]
In 2005, my two remaining grandparents passed away within two weeks of each other. My parents travelled back to the UK for the funerals and returned with a large collection of photos, documents and a couple of small mementos. Among my mother’s family papers was a key that unlocked the door to her past: her parent’s […]
This is my great-grandmother Zelda. She came to New York from Russia around 1918. Shorty after she made the Bronx her home, she met and married her distant cousin with whom she had her only child, Natalie (my grandma). Natalie died at only 39, leaving my mom and her siblings motherless much too young. That’s […]
My Pappaw’s Air Force photos are my favorites. There are so many, but the one on the left is a postcard from 1942 to my Mammaw, back home in South Carolina, and it reads: “Darling, now don’t laugh, it’s me, but I don’t believe it. Get a load of those eyes, I’ve taken up hypnotizing. […]
The family album is dying. For years, families captured their daily lives on negatives and slides. Snapshots were then selected and collected into books, slide carousels and albums. Photo corners, sticky pages, scrapbooks, and slide projectors were the tools of the trade. The process itself was slow, requiring a camera, film and a lab to process and print. Collectors like Erik Kessels have […]
Memorials mean more as the years go on, memories steeped in age and history. Lately, I have been thinking about the measure of a photograph. In a split second, a photo can capture memories and emotions that may have nothing to do with the actual photograph. I’m sure many books have been written on the […]
This is my grandad, Abraham Quioto Lopez, in 1947 with his sax. He was a true “jack of many trades and master of none, ” as he’d call it. He came to the states from Honduras in the early 1940s in search of a better life. He also played the guitar, was an avid photographer […]
I was just through old family photographs, deciding which ones to frame, and I suddenly remembered this photo of my Grandma Evelyn back in the 1930s. There’s so much I love about this photo – her hair, her blouse, that background! I didn’t know her very well, and I kick myself sometimes wishing we could’ve […]
A group of college students came across an album, a lost collection of photos of a woman and her family, frozen in time. Captivated by the beautiful family snapshots, the students made it their mission to find the owners of this lost family treasure. Here’s who they are, and why they care about lost family photos: We […]
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