Snapshots Left Behind

There’s nothing sadder than an old photo left behind. Vintage snapshots are all over flea markets and antique stores. Growing up, my parents threw all our family photos in a bottom drawer in our kitchen and I would spend evenings flipping through pictures of my parents before I knew them, as children and young adults, smiling, glaring, goofing off with people I didn’t know. There was magic in these moments captured on paper-- the realization that two people I knew so deeply had once lived lives I would never be privy to. Eventually, the drawer of photos in the kitchen became a box of pictures in the attic-- presumably my father was annoyed with me constantly being underfoot when he was trying to make spaghetti. Soon, no new pictures were being added to the box. I was born in the mid 90s, so moments of my childhood were captured and placed in photo albums and in picture frames. But my brother, born in 2001, had a life captured on digital cameras and later iPhones. Eventually, I forgot about the box and the magic of photographs.

Only in college did the magic return, this time without the filter of childhood wonder. I was part of a social justice community on my campus and would help organize volunteer opportunities for other students. One of our regular volunteer partners was an organization in Detroit that worked block-by-block with residents to create community projects. On one volunteer trip, we were tasked with picking up trash from a block that had been all but abandoned in 2008. The residents wanted to build a butterfly garden. I separated from the group and worked on a lot by myself. The house that once sat on the lawn was gone; only the foundation remained. The objects that make up a home-- toys, CDs, a pair of toddler sized Elmo pajamas-- were scattered on the lawn, buried by years of fallen leaves. I kept thinking about the family that had once lived in this home and the circumstances that may have led them to leave. The most poignant thing I found was a photo album. I sat back on my heels and flipped through it. Years of rain and snow had degraded the photos, but many were still intact. Birthday parties, Thanksgiving dinners, summer days at the pool--- all these memories preserved but then left behind. I couldn’t bear to throw the photos away. I gave them to the volunteer coordinator who promised she’d try to find the family that used to live in the house. I don’t know if she ever did.

And so I began to collect old images. I couldn’t walk by a trunk of old photos at a yard sale without picking up a handful. The people captured in black and white had been left behind or lost. It struck me as unbelievably tragic. I couldn’t leave them behind. And so my collection began to grow: what started as a harmless hobby soon began to spill out. I framed a few of the photos and interspersed them with memories of my own, but again I was struck with the sadness of leaving these people in the dark, never to be admired or looked upon with curiosity or love. And so I found myself in the midst of a global pandemic in my apartment with my cat, my books, a basket full of photos, and the determination to bring them back to life.

I pulled out a few of my favorites: a park ranger staring off into the distance, a man in an army jeep smiling at the camera, a couple relaxing on a cliff, some kids leaning over a balcony. I thought about how the world looked to those people the moment their picture was taken. I thought about how the world in 2020 would look to them. I thought about the moments before the pictures were taken and about the moments after. And I began to cut.

My scissors sliced through the months old Vanity Fair and Conde Nast Traveller magazines that had sat unopened and unread on my coffee table. I looked for pictures of the sky, of clouds and sunsets. And I cut out the sky in these old black and white photos. What was once grey, white, indistinct became vibrant. The photos themselves felt more alive. And so these people I’d never met, whose names I’ll never know, became real to me.

One day, my basket of snapshots may return to a flea market. The box of photos in my parents’ attic may end up in the back of an antique store. But I hope someone comes across those pictures and thinks about the people living their lives, captured as they were for a brief moment. I hope that person can sense the love and sorrow and memories that a photograph can contain. I hope they bring a couple of those snapshots home with them, grab a pair of scissors, and create something beautiful.