Photos From My Dad

My dad made the photo above before I was born. It's a reminder of a less affluent time when family gatherings were usually simple meals with everyone welcome to the table. These  joyful faces sharing food and company in a cramped corner of a room make me wonder if people of that era were happier and more grateful for what they have than people are today. I doubt anyone at that table imagined the riches we can now take for granted.

I often come across boxes or albums of discarded photos in thrift shops. Are they pictures of people no one knows anymore? When I see them tossed into piles like that, usually with no identification,  I wonder about all the lost stories fading away.

Some family background

I grew up in an Italian household in the last half of the 20^th century, long after my grandparents emigrated from Italy. I imagine they experienced the same hostilities newcomers feel when they come here today. Sadly, they left no stories from their lives in Italy, nor of their voyage, arrival, or new life here in the United States, and they all died before I was born.

I only know their faces from the few photos my parents had of them. One in particular was a hand-tinted wedding portrait of mom's parents that always hung on a wall in our house. The only surviving photos of dad's parents are a few crudely trimmed fragments that were clasped inside a locket worn by my aunt. In those, dad's mother's face is a side view, and the image of his father so pockmarked and deteriorated that it's barely recognizable as a face. 

Maybe that sparsity of photos on dad's side is what inspired him to have his own camera and record the ongoing life of our family. His negatives and prints are the most treasured artifacts I have of him.

Click the photo below to view the first slideshow (5 images):