Why a Printed Portrait

A couple of nights ago, my husband unearthed two boxes of old photos. He slowly went through the contents amidst laughter and tears and little snippy comments. I had to join in. There is something magical about old printed photographs that gives me goosebumps and fills me with giddy joy.

I poured two glasses of wine. As he went through the images, stories rolled out of his mouth like if from a book. Adventures I didn't know he'd lived, family members whose faces I hadn't seen before, characters neither of us knew. The smell of old paper. The blurry eyes. The artistic frames and edges. All neatly stacked inside two boxes.

There were two things about this discovery that I want to share with you, both of which help illustrate the answer to that FAQ "why would I want my portrait taken?". The first one was my husband's comment on how more than half of the photos of his mother on those boxes showed her laying down and in some unflattering position. And he went on to mention that he has no "good photos" of his parents. By good photos, I imagine, he means ones in which the quality and the image are worth of hanging on a wall for our children to look at everyday. Sadly, people do not invest in getting their portrait taken anymore, like they used to. And this brings me to the second thing that stuck with me. Mixed in with all the 70's-90's photos, we found two older posed portraits of unknown (to me) women. One is of a young woman with a manicured hairdo and pearls around her neck. The other one is of a girl with curls and flowers in her hands. The kind of portraits I want to take of all of you out there for somebody to find in a box one day. Imagine if these photos had been on floppy disks? How would I have ever had the privilege of seeing them, unable to reproduce them with today's technology?

I am now embarking on a second adventure: finding out who these women are/were. I will keep you posted. In the meantime, come get your portrait taken. Exist in photos. Print a gorgeous one of yourself. Put it up on a wall. And don't forget to write your name and date on the back! Somebody will find it years down the line, smile over a glass of Malbec and go get hers taken for future generations.