This is all my mother’s fault. She and my dad started the whole darned thing because they were avid photographers, and for my 9th birthday they gave me a “Brownie” camera. The reason I’m blaming my mom is that she was born with what is scientifically referred to as the Very Cool Photo Album Creativity gene while I, sadly, was not. She was fashioning awesome photo albums back when “scrapbook” was still a noun. These days everybody is “scrap booking” and occasionally the hobby gets so out of hand it veers into obsession. Don’t quote me on this, but I’ve heard rumors of “Scrapbook Rehabs” popping up all over the country:
(“My name is Blanche, and I’m a scrap-aholic,” a small, quivering voice begins. “Hi, Blanche!” shouts the crowded room. “I’m so ashamed,” sobs Blanche into her hankie. “I promised I would never buy another pair of jaggedy-edged scrap booking scissors. I have them in every color including Papaya Whip. I have scissors that cut any border known to man. I even bought scissors that cut a cute little line of crabs walking sideways across the edge of the photograph … .” Here the leader loses control as scrap bookers-on-the-edge break into pandemonium begging to know where to buy crab-cutting scissors. “I thought I had it licked,” resumes Blanche when the chaos has subsided into a few random sniffles. “But then I found a pair in that new shade of Light Olive Drab,” she moaned. “I mean, Light Olive Drab, people!”)
So although both my parents were photographers and took lots of pictures, it was my mother who had it together when it came to storing her precious prints. No sooner were her pictures developed than those images were artfully affixed with paper corners and glued onto velvety black pages inside hand-tooled leather scrapbooks. Written neatly under each photo (in white ink no less) were the names of the people in the photo, where and when each picture was taken, and possibly who was driving the carpool that week. On the other hand, I inherited my photo album technique from my dad whose method involved a highly technical process of taking the prints out of the drug store envelope and tossing them into a large box.
It wasn’t always this way. When my daughters were small, I compiled impressive albums of photos, even going so far as popping inside the albums what my girls later regarded as supremely embarrassing souvenirs such as the nubs of their cast-off umbilical cords. But then came that dark day in photo album history: the dreaded Photo Album Acid Alert. This affliction bleached the color right out of photographs, and the evidence of young Mortimer’s entire existence could end up resembling a day on the beach encased in pea soup fog. This naturally prompted me to gather up our numerous photo albums and detach hundreds of stubbornly affixed family photographs, which I found to be about as easy as pulling paint off concrete with my bare hands. After the exhaustive purge, I utilized my dad’s filing system and “temporarily” heaped my fragile, tissue thin photographs into boxes.
I intended to purchase new, acid-free albums and re-create my precious albums. I really did. Instead, I bountifully photographed the passage of time as my girls grew to adulthood, acquiring still more pictures. Before I knew it, my collection of photos had grown to – gulp – 21 boxes. Like dust bunnies that mocked from under the bed and junk drawers that threatened to take over the kitchen, those boxes taunted me. Where would I find a large chunk of time to organize decades of photographs? And then I had the answer – I’d take them on vacation! There, unfettered by daily demands, I would spread them out, delight in them, lay each one tenderly on its assigned page. At least that was the idea.
So I lugged all those boxes to the trunk of my car and drove to Colorado to visit my brother. Nothing ever happens there, I reasoned. I’d have plenty of time to organize my pictures.
“Good God!” was my dumb brother’s touchy reaction as I hauled endless boxes out of my vehicle and deposited them in a corner of his living room. “Whatever possessed you to hang on to so many pictures?”
“They light the corners of my mind, OK?” I snapped.
“What are you, a Hallmark card?” he shot back.
OK, so I probably had a few more pictures than I technically needed. But how do you decide which ones to discard? I mean, should I just pretend my daughter never wore a delightful aluminum foil “bridal gown” when she was three or forget the time the dog adorably got his front half stuck inside the KFC bag that he dragged out of the trash? Sure, ten shots of every slight variation of pose may sound excessive, but how does one decide which angle is the absolute-keep-forever best? These things are precious, people!
So I’d like to say my visit with my brother saw me whipping through all those boxes. I’d like to say that, but unfortunately there were days when I needed to see a movie or drink iced tea or just, you know, read the phone book. With endless things to attend to I couldn’t simply ignore life while I sorted through old photographs, could I? So I rifled through a box or two, packed them up and brought them all back home where they sit today. Mocking me.
But does it really matter whether photographs are stored in a box or in a book? Aren’t they just as meaningful in a pretty box as they are mounted in an album? I say: Yes! At least for today. Because today I face a much bigger challenge. Yep, the digital camera was my Armageddon. Looming inside my computer is an ever-expanding file of images, and with … oh, approximately 17 million priceless photographs waiting for me on my hard drive, I think it’s time to go have some iced tea.
Gale Hammond is a writer and freelance photographer who has lived in Morgan Hill 24 years. Reach her at Ga*********@*ol.com.
