I want to tell you about this photograph.
What you’re looking at here is almost all of my Gramma, and most of my father, standing on the beach at Lake Nepawhin. The picture was taken no later than 1981 with a Kodak Instamatic X-15F, by a clearly amateur photographer.
Let’s face it, it’s a terrible picture. The photographer didn’t understand that what you saw through the viewfinder was not exactly what the camera would record, or how to hold the camera so that a fingertip wouldn’t get in the way. But I love it beyond all reason. Not for what it portrays, though it is a pretty spectacular depiction of my Dad’s beer belly, which until the end of his life he declared to be “all muscle.” I love it for what it means.
I took the picture, and the Instamatic belonged to my Dad. I’m guessing it’s the oldest existing example of my photographic work, and I feel nothing less than joy when I look at it.
Sometimes I get so wrapped up thinking about the things my father did to me that I forget the things he did for me. I forget that he wasn’t a one-sided villain, and that for all the ways he contributed to my mental illness, there were as many ways that he contributed to the parts of myself that I really like.
The Instamatic is sitting in front of me on the kitchen table as I write this, and in 2020 it looks like a piece of cheap plastic and metal junk. It was never a piece of junk to my Dad though; in fact, he won it as a prize in a logo-drawing competition where he worked, and considered it a kind of “screw you” to the people who had told him he would never win any prizes for his art. This camera, for him, was validation of his own creativity.
And one day, one summer, he let me use it.
Just imagine handing your precious camera to a six- or eight-year old and saying something that amounted to, “Go ahead, I trust you with it.” I don’t actually remember that day, I only have the picture. But the picture is evidence enough that he wanted to share this good part of his world with me. Over the years we spent a lot of time taking pictures together, and those are all good memories.
I miss taking pictures with this camera. It sits now on a high shelf with a small group of other objects that reminds me of the best times my Dad and I had together. It’s a symbol now, both an introduction and a summary of the artistic journey I have been on my whole life.
Whatever else I am, I know that I’m an artist. My father gave me that when he handed me that camera.
I can’t get over the enormity of that gift.
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You are indeed, an artist of the first order, Linda… in many areas!