--
I went home unexpectedly this weekend because my grandfather died. My first night back in the States was spent sifting through projector slides of 20 years' worth of photos he took of our family and scanning them into digital format to be printed and hung at his wake as well as to be saved permanently.
I got back today, napped, and went to my first class of the semester, Modernity through the Lens: The Avant-Garde, Utopia, Technology, and Mass Culture. The below image was discussed as an example of the transformative effect that photography had on the way people processed their reality through images.
Before these photos existed, horses were only seen in real life or in paintings. The painted ones, even when depicted mid-gallop, were shown with one foot on the ground at all times. As you can see above, this is often the case. Argument arose over whether a horse in gallop ever left the ground completely; it was ended by the production of the above frames. These photos exposed a new facet of reality the viewer had previously been unable to see.
I had thought about my grandfather's death before this week. He was old, and had been slowing down more and more each year. I knew him as Charley the octagenarian who couldn't work his camera, and who tried and failed to hide his habit of feeding the dog under the table. Until this weekend, I hadn't realized I'd sought little account of what he was like before 1990. The slides showed Charley the newlywed, Charley the salesman, Charley the young father, obviously all Charleys I'd never met. I only got to hold onto one of the photos I found this weekend, one I'd previously have said was of the former Charley. I'm glad to have seen all those slides this weekend, because now I get to see all the other Charleys when I look at that one as it hangs in my room here in London.
--
On a lighter note:
I’ve always enjoyed telling people about Grandpa Charley,
because it gives me the chance to pass along my favorite of his stories, the
one in which he, as a student at Boston University, traded racist jokes with none
other than fellow Terrier Martin Luther King Jr. Apparently whenever they saw
each other Charley would bust out his top black jokes and the Reverend would
respond with his best material on the Irish. Now, as much renown as he gets for
his skills as a revisionist historian, Grandpa’s clairvoyance is often
overlooked: my personal favorite part of the story as he tells it is that
following one of their repartees Grandpa said, “Listen Martin, I like you, but if you’re not careful you’re
gonna get yourself shot!” As careful as Martin was, he did get shot, leaving no recourse
for those of us who would love to get a second opinion on the veracity of this
story. I consider myself one of those people, but I think the story still shows
Grandpa very truly, whether or not the details stand up. He was an unfailingly
friendly man who could make anybody laugh, and often wanted to do little more. That’s how I’ll remember him.
Here's a photo I took of him last summer.
