"Many years ago I received a huge, heavy box from a friend at Christmas. Inside was a collection of hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of photographs, all but a few black + white, each lovingly captioned on the back with date and location, chronicling a family's life from the 1930s through the early 1970s. Every moment was photographed. The illustrated story of an American midwestern military family. Accidental multiple exposures, blurry photographs, and poorly exposed images were kept and indexed just as carefully as those that were well composed. I couldn't believe my eyes."
Something significant about these photographs is that most of them have been lovingly captioned on the back. The names of those in the photo, the town it was taken in, the date... this fills in gaps, makes subjects characters rather than anonymous, actual people rather than just faces.
I'll be focusing on these characters today, all of the photographs of Part 5 in the series are posed family portraits. Stay tuned for Part 6.
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| "Sept. 7, 1953. St. Louis. Before leaving on train to New York + England" |
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| "Doug, Mar. 1960" |
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| "Sept. '60" |
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| "Sept. '60" |
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| "Sept. '60" |
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| "Sept. 26, 1961" |
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| "Neighbors at cabin at Grafton" |
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| "Cabin at Grafton" |
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| "Cabin at Grafton" |
Here are the first four installments, in case you missed them --
A box of photographs.... part 1.
A box of photographs.... part 2.
A box of photographs.... part 3.
A box of photographs.... part 4.
