I have just spent the morning looking for a photograph that I took over 35 years ago. I did not find it so that’s why I’m now here, trying to clear my mind and pretending that my obsession with it is over.
In my mind’s eye, I can see that photo in detail as clear as if I took it last Monday, but that does not help me in the least because the filing system that I settled on for my photos from back then, turns out to suck.
I can say that all of the photographs (nay…MOST of the photographs, let’s not over-sell here!) (in fact, let’s dial that back to SEVERAL of the photographs) that I took once I turned to photography as a profession, umpteen years ago, can be traced back to their origins with relative ease, thanks to a complicated cataloging system that I cobbled together at the beginning of my career–back when I had LOADS of time on my hands as I waited for my door to be knocked down by adoring clients who were eager to pay extravagant fees for my just-barely-professional work. Heady days!
At that time, in a fit of exaggerated snobbery, I poo-poo’d all of the snapshots I had taken prior to hanging out my shingle as a pro, and I tossed the multitudinous (Heaven forbid I ever have to read that word aloud in public) collection of 4”x 6” machine prints higgledy-piggledy into numerous archival photo boxes that were close to hand.
(It’s actually surprising how much 4x6s weigh! If you’re thinking about dragging one of your own boxes of photos up the cellar stairs to peruse in greater comfort, make sure that someone knows what your plan is, that you don’t try to juggle anything else at the same time, and that you bend your knees as you lift. You’ve been warned.)
Not having given a moment’s thought to cataloguing my images prior to having some how-to-become-a-professional-photographer book tell me that I should, I dumped all of my pre-pro pics into those almost identical photo boxes that I never bothered to label, and closed the door on the whole matter. Now, any time I want to look for a photo from my gentle youth, I have to sift through the hidden horrors of those boxes, endlessly looking at each and every photograph.
I know what you’re thinking. You think it would be lovely to spend a morning revisiting your younger self and the earlier versions of all of your friends and family by drifting your way through a box of naïve photographs.
“Look! That’s when Heather toilet-papered the outside of the house in the middle of the night as a surprise for my 17th birthday!”
“Ho, ho—I remember that Halloween!”
“Sigh. I loved that cat…whatever its name was.”
And maybe each of my journeys into a box of my old photographs starts in that same way, however, it isn’t long before I begin to question why I wasn’t beaten up regularly for the clothes I left the house wearing, or I find myself in sheer puzzlement at the string of hair styles that I prided myself on at the time. That was a LOT of hair, even for the 80s!
Today’s foray yielded those types of tangents as well as feelings of loneliness for the people who have already passed out of my life. I smiled back at the happiness exhibited by those people as well as at the others who I am lucky enough to still gather around me like a security blanket.
I came across The Great European Adventure photos and The Australia Trip photos, and rediscovered the disappointment of how little photography is able to capture the majesty and magic of our own Rocky Mountains. There were cross country car and rail trips, and excited first looks around new apartments. The Girls from high school looked fresh and wholesome, the Girls from college were ALWAYS shown in fits of laughter. There were boys I’d known for variety of reasons, and there were the cats. I only really knew about half of them (the cats)—the rest were complete strangers or someone else’s problem. (Mind you, the same could be said for the boys.)
And, there were reams of photos of life just being beautiful, stopped in time so that I could witness it again and again.
Each time I am up to my earlobes in photographs from the past, I am reminded that although those times and places and stages of life are lovely to visit through their images, the constant chain of tiny choices that I have made as I have lived on, has brought me to Now. I am still that happy-go-lucky uncomplicated person drawn to record whatever and whomever interests me, but I don’t deny that seeing my past life through a series of 4×6 prints always leaves me with a sense of regret.
I regret not keeping the black slouch boots or the full-length vinyl coat with the enormous faux fur collar and hot pink lining. I regret not telling the people that I have loved, that they were magnificent, more often. I regret not paying more for my hair products back then. I regret not realizing what a gift those photographs were going to be to me and that I didn’t take even more pictures.
And, I regret that I didn’t realize that some basic form of cataloguing would have been a better way to inventory all of those prints. Even animal/vegetable/mineral would have been an improvement, for crying out loud!
Ooooo, that gives me a thought. I’ll bet the photo I’m after is in one of the boxes holding down the lid of the box that my wedding dress got shoved into! Excuse me while I run off and check. I’m suddenly desperate for a win!
