So I am taking the blog it forward baton from my gal Christine over at Lavender and Limes – who’s needing some encouragement right about now. I was similarly robbed back in October and understand the messy ball of helplessness, confusion, anger and sadness – that no matter what people say, still doesn’t bring it all back. So no worries, my friend! Hopefully I can do my little part to spread the inspiration!
Today I wanted to share with you a form of inspiration that has kind of crept up on me. Over the last several years I have had very well meaning friends give me stacks of old family photos or photos from garage/estate sales and this conversation usually ensues:
Me: Wow! What are these for???
Friend: Well, I knew you were a photographer, so I thought you might like these old photos.
M: Hmmmm….okay! Cool! Are you sure?
(nod)
So now I have found myself with a small collection of family and heirloom photos of people that are of no relation to me and they have grown to give me a great amount of inspiration for my work.
The interest in personal portraiture began long before I started collecting and preserving photos. I have always been curious about the reasons why we take the photos we do and what we are communicating in and through them – whether intentionally or not. Personal photos hold such deep and powerful narratives of life, love, longing, identity and legacy and I’m seeing how important it is to preserve these – even if only digitally.
The photos I’ve posted are some of my favorites from what I’ve gathered. I think I love them so much because they all, in some way seem uninhibited and joyful. Some of them are clearly hamming it up (like the three dudes above and the groups of girls below) while others are simple quiet moments.
We all want to be seen and known by each other and photographs let us do this. They are evidence of story.
In an age where mostly everything is digital and we can delete pictures to our hearts content, these photographs bring me back to reality and a time when you had limited amounts of film and supplies and you had to make the photos count. Or, like in so many of these photos, throw caution to the wind and just have fun! Don’t delete that photo – find the joy in its honesty.
I enjoy that I can see a piece of myself in all of these photos. They inspire me with their composition, lighting, movement, and poses and encourage me to take more pictures and to see my everyday experiences in light of the similarity they have to the past. If you find that you’re stuck in the same old picture taking mode – dust off the oldies you have lying around and have fun making up stories and you’ll find you’ll want to make some new ones with your own!
It’s been awesome getting the opportunity to share with you these photos and rough hewn! Stay tuned this week for more posts on things that inspire me! As I go I’ll pass the blog it forward torch on to Legal Style – who is teaching me a thing or two about how to rock the belt!
Wow! These photographs are absolutely incredible! Thanks for sharing, glad the mashup introduced me to your blog!
What a sweet collection have!
I think these pictures are awesome!
What do you think about the idea that when you took pictures back then, you were far more careful with the process of taking them because you had a limited amount of film? If you don’t have to think about it so much now, it necessarily in the first place changes the value of the mass of digital pictures to something possibly intrinsically less… yes? no?
What I mean is, can we say “Or, like in so many of these photos, throw caution to the wind and just have fun! Don’t delete that photo – find the joy in its honesty.” And mean the same thing as back then? Not that I think you can’t say that. I’m not even close to a photographer, so I am really curious about this and I have no idea.
this is so great! i love old photographs, too. so much history and makes my imagination go wild wondering what these people were like. well done!
Thanks, for passing this on, Leah! I was going to post something else… but now you’ve kind of inspired me to go digging for old photographs. Maybe I’ll follow your lead…?
Lindsay
Wow! These photos are absolutely incredible!! I really enjoyed reading your post. Most of the time we just click away like crazy without any awareness of what we are really doing. It’s kind of creepy in a way… I think there has to be something “deep” in the interplay between the obsession we have with taking pictures and the one we have with deleting the “bad” ones. Great post!!
xxox
i love old photos! LOVE THEM! great post!