In Camera

My parents lived in a small bungalow they had built in 1955 I believe ... moving from an apartment they had on Rockland Road ... the bungalow was on City Line ... the municipal bouindary between Saint John and Lancaster .. my father returning to the stomping grounds of his youth .. it was about a 15 minute walk from where he grew up ... 

They slept in 2 single beds in a the master bedroom at the south side of the house ... the old man had a chest of drawers on his side of the bedroom .. my mother had a dresser and mirror on her side .. the two pieces didn't match ... metaphor I guess ...

Every once in a while when my mother was gardening and the old man wasn't around I would rummage through the top drawer of his dresser ... there was all kinds of interesting stuff in there .. jack knives .. old coins .. tie clips .. cuff links .. old watches .. and .. two old cameras. I was infatuated with those cameras .. because they made the photos that I so enjoyed looking at ... the old albums that my mother had and the few pictures they had taken on their own ..  there were no pictures of my father's side of the family .. nothing ... yes .. we'll get there ....

The two cameras were very different .. one was a bellows type; fixed focal point ... you pulled the bellows out .. aimed and activated the shutter .. the other one though was more compact .. the lens housing screwed out .. again fixed focal point ... and there was a spring loaded metal flap that when sprung open, allowed a smaller one to spring up as well and this was what you looked through to compose the photo.

It's amazing how few pictures it takes to document a life at 1/250 of a second ... and it's amazing they hold so much emotion and meaning ... it has been said that a human being is nothing but a memory .. meaning if we had no memories at all, we would be 'dead' ... but if we push some of those memories down ... or refuse to deal with them .. what are we then ... I guess we are still a work in propress ... with some heavy emotional lifting still to do to be complete ... 

The first photos I ever took were with that small compact camera and I still have them ... in the little kodak booklet that developed photos were mounted in ... back in the day ... from then on I usually had a camera with me of some description .. it became a way of documenting moments in my life that I thought were important ... and another friend .. always telling the truth ... even when the truth was too much to handle ...

I dont know what happened to that camera but I destroyed the old man's dresser when I partially gutted my mother's basement .... in a different house ... a few years ago, because of water damage .. I could have saved it ... I didn't ..  yes .. I took some pictures ... 


Phil (13 December 2020 - San Patricio de Melaque - 7:24 PM)


Krome Koan - 'I'm a photographer .. I shoot people people and cut off their heads'








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