I have a box of photographs in my basement. It's been there for over thirty years. It took up residence on a little shelf in a closet in my basement in 1993, just after my father died and we cleaned out his house to make it ready to sell. It was filled very quickly at my father's house (the house in which I grew up). Drawers and closets were opened and the contents were quickly assessed. After the separation of stuff deemed "trash" and stuff which Mrs. Pincus saw as "saleable," photographs — all photographs — were tossed into a cardboard box and brought to my house. You can't throw photographs away!, we thought. They're photographs, for goodness sake!
And there they sat. In a box. In my basement... where no one looked at them. No one organized them. No one cared about them.
My mom was the unofficial historian for the family. She knew who was married to who, whose children belonged with which cousin or aunt or whoever. Her knowledge of the family went back to generations that were around before she was born. She knew about family members that never made the trek to the United States. When she married my father, she even was able to decipher relationships in the mysterious Pincus branch of the family. Unfortunately, my mother died in 1991 and she took the family history with her. There was no longer anyone to ask about the ins-and-outs of uncles and grandparents and "how is he related to us.... again?"
In the early days of the COVID-19 insolation, I found myself wandering around my house, looking for something to occupy the time. I came across the box of photos in my basement. I had just joined a private Facebook group that was set up by a second or third cousin with whom I had lost touch. The group was devoted to my mother's side of the family. I started to rifle through the box of photos and select those which featured people I could Identify. Most of these showed my mother in her teens and early 20s. That was a time when she was — to put it into today's terms — a party girl. My mom was gregarious fun-loving girl, always looking for a good time and a hunky guy to latch on to. It didn't hurt that she bore a passing resemblance to actress Barbara Stanwyck. I uncovered dozens and dozens of snapshots of my mom. In most, she was mugging for the camera, striking poses that rivaled 1980s Madonna. In some of the pictures, her arm was laced through that of a shirtless guy with a swimming pool in the background. In others, she was all smiles as she was embraced by a guy in a snappy military uniform. None of these men, I should mention, were my father.
I found other pictures, too. I found shots of my brother, me and the rare example of the two of us together in the same picture. Most of these pictures were taken by my father, whose inimitable style was apparent by the amount of space above our heads and the fact that we were not always the main focus of the composition. In other photos, I recognized the faces of cousins who are now in their late 60s and 70s. I found pictures of long deceased uncles and aunts seated on sofas I remembered from my childhood living room. However, there were dozens and dozens of pictures that showed people I did not recognize. Smiling women and stern-faced men peered in the direction of the camera. Laughing girls and awkwardly posed young boys sporting thick-framed glasses stared at me from those warped and faded squares of celluloid. And then I'd pick up a picture of my mom in a fur coat on the Atlantic City boardwalk, letting me know that these pictures all belonged to the same family. It's just I was not able to identify everyone.
Mrs. Pincus and I took a lot of pictures. We have pictures from Walt Disney World, Niagara Falls and Hershey Park. We have pictures from ball games and pictures of our cats rolling around on our kitchen floor. We have loads of pictures of our son, from his first day of school and seeing him off to summer camp to high school graduation and countless New Years Eve celebrations. Some of those pictures have been neatly arranged in multipage albums, but most are still in their developing service envelopes and stashed in the drawers of a dresser in our guest bedroom. (If you want to stay overnight at the Pincus house, you're keeping your clothes in your suitcase.)
I started thinking....
My wife and I are in our 60s. What on earth will become of our photographs when our time among the living comes to an end? And what will be the fate of that box of photographs in our basement?
My son (who is in his middle 30s) has a house of his own. I can assure you that he does not want to clutter said house with a bunch of photographs from his parents' house, let alone a box of pictures of people that I can't even identify. I'm pretty sure that all of the pictures in our house will meet the same fate that all that unopened mail in my father's house experienced. That would be "Dumpster City."
There have been a lot of great inventions over the years. The electric light bulb. The printing press. Television. I think the greatest invention is digital photography. If only digital photography was around in my parents' youth. I wouldn't have a mystery box of pictures in my house. I wouldn't have drawers and drawers of pictures that my son will probably toss sometime after my funeral.
Yes sir. Digital photography is a true innovation. No boxes of pictures. No waiting for developing. And that all-powerful, all-important "delete" function.
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