Parting Shots
April 4, 2022, 7:12 am , by Richard Lutz
RICHARD LUTZ ploughs a way through a mountain of old photos
The little girl is dressed up to go someplace special. She leans into her stolid grandmother. There’s a trusting child’s smile. She’s with her family, maybe on the way to church or a birthday. It must be the mid 1950’s.
It’s six decades after that picture was taken either on the Isle of Man or in Scotland and, this week, that little girl (who is now my wife Jane) and I are ’going through the photographs’. Moving to a smaller home does that sort of thing to your head: go for a major clear-out, go through the photo albums. The little girl picture escapes the cut, that brutal cut to chuck out about 90% of our collection. It stays. Of course it does.
Another that stays: a letter written in Hebrew from 1908. Usher Holtzmann is writing to his grandfather asking gently about the family, that family from my father’s side. Someone has carefully typed out a translation. Is this the same man as Teddy Holtzmann (my paternal grandmother’s little brother) who died in a sanatorium from TB? The same Teddy Holtzmann that an older generation still mourned fifty years after his death?
This 114 year old letter stays too.
And the enigmatic portrait of a well dressed man circa 1950…suit, hat, overcoat, dapper moustache. Here he is:
It was my grandfather. Until my sister pointed out that was not Grandpa George. Well…who was it? Just who was it whose framed photograph graced a bookcase for twenty years and we revered as a patriarch of the family? Who…? A relative says Sam Berkman. Another says Ned Lutz. No one now knows for sure.
An unending wave of other photos and memorabilia are consumed to the flames. Firstly, all duplicates go. Then the cascade of landscape pictures, many shrouded in Scottish mist, others vibrant with vigour. Some are kept, including one or two taken during a deluded black and white phase until I accepted I’d never be another Ansell Adams.
Then came the inevitable rollcall of holiday photos. We decided to keep two (or three or four…it’s difficult) pictures from each holiday…holidays in France, Spain, India, the States. Or work trips to Pakistan and Tanzania. And those little important Sunday local trips to a river, a castle, the seaside.
Then the big difficult decisions. We plough through the family shots, the departed parents, the distant cousins and, of course, each of our two sons from newborn to university graduates. And then, the flood of photos seem to suddenly lurch to a stop. It’s inevitable. Digital pictures cut short the photo albums. For the past two decades and a bit, all portraits and holidays are stored on a computer, on a disc, a stick, on a phone. What will happen to those shots? Will there be an Ether Clear-out? Will they become targets of mass delete? Or even a slip of a sloppy finger that erases them from a digital collection…. whoops, there goes 18 years of weddings, holidays, Christmas meals.
The cull is now in its final day. Album after album emerge, from inside a trunk, from a forgotten cache in a closet or simply stacked in a box during our move. And when we end this Kodak Clear Out, we’ll take a deep breathe, pour another drink and start on that box of delightful 8mm home movies that are stored away, becoming more brittle each year and wait for someone, somewhere, to unearth a projector to reveal what’s on those silent films from so long ago.
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Alan Holland
A task made more difficult by being led down a side road by every snap to reminisce about the occasion, the people and the many memories it reawakens. thanks Richard.
Sophie Kent
A Special thing to do
Will Travel
The past is another country
Sue Johnson
We had an ‘Uncle’ always in my husband’s grandparents home. He was known as Grandad Riley but he actually wasn’t a blood uncle, and nobody knows who he really was.
Bob Prosser from Herefordshire
We feel your pain. We tried it when we were moving from Orleton, but it did not work, so there is now a loft space at Lingfield piled deep with memories, only partly curated. The thing about the use of smart phones, selfies etc is that one can accumulate huge volumes of often very unmemorable and forgettable images.
Sarah McKendrick
One example of the good side of keeping stuff: a couple of years ago the wife of my oldest friend and best man asked me if I had photos of us as kids and teenagers in Coventry. Her husband John was suffering from increasing dementia, but had flashes of memory. I sent her a whole bunch of images which she put in an album which she worked through with him when she visited him in the care home. She sent me a photo of them sitting together doing this and she said that it was a very positive exercise for several months
John Knox
Lovely word-pitcure of times passing. We can all relate to that.
Ellen Vannen
Have you started on the projector slides? We’ve got boxes of them!
Deke from Boston
Good stuff, but where are the pictures of you and your brother Bill in Prospect Park?
Tony Fitzpatrick
Sound advice….been avoiding this one for years. One question…. do you need a ‘group decision’ for each image… might be tricky this end…!!!
Jim Burke
I spent last winter/spring doing that with the family archives, which went back well into the late 1800s. Some pictures of my parents before they got married that cast them (at least, to me,) in a whole new light. I did not have to throw anything out because I transferred the archives to a niece who was more than happy to take them for the next generation. But now there are my own old slides and pictures, which will be a story more like yours.
Karen Eisen
Oh, so true! We’ve all been there!
Indra Bridges
Next time bring your camera. See youse soon
Lorna Hankinson
I’m impressed- we too recently went through a huge box from my late mother in law’s. The reminiscing was such an enjoyable experience. Unfortunately (or fortunately) we put them all back in same box so didn’t clear any space! Still have another one to do – like the idea of keeping 3 from each album. Maybe this summer we’ll get to it?
Will Travel
We’re sorting out assorted old photos at the moment.
It’s sad when we don’t know who someone is.
Joel M
My idea is after I die the kids can deal with it. Most of the good ones are digitized. nobody will care after we are dead and gone. It does give me a little pleasure to know the kids will have to deal with this, wondering where the good pictures of them are buried
Edie Wright
Sweet memories
Mark Selig
we’re both amazed at what a young and handsome couple we were…
Bob Mazoroski
You’re more courageous than I am. I can’t throw anything away.
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