No, not the cookies, photographs. I love B/W photo’s from ages gone by. I tend to like photography of all sorts because it reminds of short stories and poetry–that frozen moment in time that gets passed on.
Some of them are what I call instant relatives:
Check out those faces and those clothes. An earlier era caught in time.
Others just seem to make me focus on the details without the distraction of color. Note the boy in trying to get away without helping to water the plants.
In our ‘water closet’ on the wall opposite where we sit, I have one of those frames that are two sheets of glass and your contents ‘float’ in it. Mine are three B/W snaps I found in a box at an vintage flea market, killing time one day in New York when I up there for a convention that sucked was better for the things I did by myself than the meetings I attended.
These three spoke to me, and so I put them all together, even though they are clearly unrelated. One is of two small children, a boy and girl, c. 1910, playing in a yard. One is an outdoor shot of a crowd of men and women, black and white in skin color as well as photo color, c. 1920, crowded around four women seated around a table playing a card game. The last, from the 1940’s, features a middle-aged couple. The man is dressed in a 3 pc suit and tie, sitting in an easy chair, incongruously wearing his slippers. The woman stands behind a card table, dressed in her Sunday lacy suit, holding a small blackboard upon which is chalked: “Bonjour Pierrot.”
These 3 give me plenty to think about when I’m closeted away, although I admit I frequently take a book in there with me. But the questions roll and differ with each “sitting.” How could children play with such a long dress? What are they pouring out of that battered pail? In the card game, where would such a mixed crowd gather easily in this time frame? A palm tree in one corner gives me a hint that this may be a place like Moracco or Tangiers, surely that wrought iron light on the building is Art Deco? The women’s chairs are metal bentwood, but what game are they playing that interests the gathering? Did the man think his feel wouldn’t be in that photo, so he put his slippers on after church? Who is Pierrot? I’ve decided the cloth thrown over the card table has bunches of purple grapes, green stems and a red border. Why? Because I can.
Can’t you just feel yourself walking toward this mother, outside a Paris cemetary?
Can’t you smelland taste the crispy crusts of the bread in the window at this bakery in NY’s Little Italy?
Can’t you inhale the mix of fog and fumes in this oldie?
I can.
:
y.
Auntiemwrites Crime-Mystery Author M K Graff 