I love photography. I love it because of the places it can transport us to. I’ve been through boxes and boxes of my family photos, and each time it’s a new journey. Am I going to St. Thomas to experience my parents’ honeymoon through their eyes? Will I be helping my dad and grandpa build a new porch and garage on my grandparents’ house? Or will I be transported back to my own preschool years of running around the playground in dresses my grandma made for me?
Each time I open a box of those photos, I get to re-experience those memories, whether they’re mine or not. I don’t claim to be able to read people’s minds through photographs, but I love getting to see their perspectives of a particular place in time. It connects me to different versions of my family and gives a sense of what their lives were like. It is certainly fun to see my grandparents running around like fools at the riverbed, young and in love. And there’s a sense of awe when I view the photos of my great-something grandfather’s blacksmith shop and the horses he would shoe.
This is why I print my photos. I want to remember the first Thanksgiving meal my fiancé and I prepared together in our own home. I want to remember the snow falling on my face, as the person who would become my dearest friend and I ran home to our dorms at the end of our first semester at college. I want to always have one of my earliest memories of sitting on my dad’s shoulders as we and my mom hiked through the snow to pick out a big 10 footer for our Christmas tree.
Looking at that photo of me and my dad won’t bring him back, but it lets me hear his voice which I haven’t heard in years. And all the other photos remind me every day of the beautiful and sometimes difficult memories I have with people that I love with all my heart and love me back just as fiercely. That is why I love photography.
– Cindi
