Does anyone ever think about what a small miracle photography is? Especially now, with our phones loaded with hundreds (ok thousands, mine has over 14,000) of photos, it’s so commonplace, and yet can be such a source of joy, sorrow, wonder.
Being an older person, I have photos from well before the arrival of digital cameras and cell phones. Taking the film canisters to the store to be developed, impatiently waiting for them to be ready, and then clutching the precious envelope with the pictures, hoping there would be some good ones; ones that weren’t blurry or double exposed, ones that didn’t emphasize the prominence of one’s nose, or one’s RBF face, or one’s thickening waistline.
Diving into a box of old photos brings a rush of emotion. Pictures of forgotten friends, old loves, beloved pets, landscapes that you can’t quite identify but vaguely remember. Many smiles, some wistful memories, a few tears, as you shuffle through them, simultaneously astonished at how YOUNG you looked then and feeling an onslaught of memories. That’s really what it’s for, right? To capture those moments, those people, those places; because years later, the pictures instantly transport you back to that time and those feelings.
This picture is from London in the fall of 1979. I was finishing my senior year of college and was at my university’s London campus for my final term. Near the campus, at Maria Assumpta in Kensington, was an old fashioned hardware store that had never given any thought to attractive displays or marketing. The store cat sat in the window most days and we would walk by and see him. I never went inside the store, petted him, or knew his name, but he was a part of my days. Simply uncovering this picture brings it all back, the excitement of being in another country for the first time, my parents’ worry (which I could not understand then), my exhilaration, the many new experiences, the beginning of a love for travel. I periodically am back in London and I always make my way to my old school on Kensington Square, and then down the street to where the hardware store was located. It is an estate agent’s shop now, tidied and brightened and with photos of properties I could never afford to buy or lease. But the spirit of the cat in the window lives in me and brightens my days with memories.
