Carol's Corner

A picture is worth a thousand words, the old saying goes. I think looking back at old photos helps us remember the words, the time, the event if we were there. If it happened before our time, we can catch a glimpse into a bygone era in a way that words may not make clear.

Recording events, scenes and familiar faces through the medium of photography allows us to revisit details that may have slipped from our memory. I grew up when cameras, film and developing were expensive. My parents did not have extra money for many luxuries and the photos of my childhood are few. Yet some exist. My mother’s family for a number of generations thought saving money, to have a photo to commemorate special life events, an important legacy to leave for their family. I loved looking through my grandparent’s photos to see what my great grandparents actually looked like as a young couple or what my mother looked like as a child and a teen.

I think about my children and grandchildren, determined in my mind I will remember details of their growth, their hobbies and activities but time has a way of dimming the internal picture. I can grab a handful of photos, or look through an album and take a journey into the past.

Have you ever taken time to look at the details in old photos? We can chuckle at the strange hairdo or clothing. We can know what type of car the family owned at a given period of time. Fashions change and I look at photos from the 1800’s and note the dark colors, the formality of the professional photo and the seriousness of their expressions. I wonder if people ever smiled during these photo sessions.

I think looking back at old photos, especially from long ago, gives a wealth of information to make our stories more authentic. I think photos do more than preserve a family’s story but provide research for fiction stories set in other eras. After my paternal grandmother’s death we spent time visiting while sorting the photos she owned. Most were marked which helped us know who the people in the photo were. One in particular aroused my curiosity. A lovely young woman stood in a photographers studio. The handwritten caption my grandmother added included these words, “A fiance of Roy.” Roy was my grandfather, dead for over thirty years at this point. Now there was no one to ask the questions that raced through my mind. “When had grandpa been engaged to this woman? “What had happened to break off the engagement?” Maybe the most interesting question, “Why had grandma kept the photo all these years?”

Can one simple picture and caption be the basis of a short story, or the start of character sketches for a longer work of fiction? Have you sorted through photos of people you might not know to be able to describe clothing, buildings, vehicles or landscapes?