Images With Memories
How photos, and other imagery, bring the past back to life
Photo by Robert Schall Photography shot on Hasselblad 500 CM
A reminder of
I was perusing, trying to remedy boredom, hopeful that my sparse bookshelves might yield some form of entertainment. It was late, I really should have just turned in for the night, but I still had some golden, peaty elixir left in my glass and was feeling a little restless, in need of something to still my racing thoughts.
Nope, nothing on this shelf. On to the next one.
Nah, rather not look through my motorcycle book collection…will just make me want to go on a trip again. Still the middle of the winter, too early to yearn for a new motorcycle trip. Though did mentally earmark the journals of previous trips. They should make for a good series of blogs.
Argh, this next shelf has too much serious stuff. Skip!
And then I found it, stuffed between a heavy tomb on Harley history and a few books for photographers, was a sleek, black, letter-sized notebook, no lettering on the spine, and none on the cover.
I was intrigued. I had forgotten about this book. Actually, I was stumped, how could I let it slip from my memory?
Time to reminisce
There I was leafing through my grandfather’s little marvel of a wedding album. My mother’s parents’ honeymoon photo album.
Photo by Robert Schall Photography shot on Hasselblad 500 CM
His creativity and artistic nature are a pure joy to behold.
This little gem playfully takes you through their nuptials and then off on their whirlwind of a honeymoon. My grandfather, who was a pilot, had bought a motorbike with a sidecar. With this, my newlywed grandparents took a gentle 1,000km trip around northern Germany. As an avid motorbiker myself, with plenty of longer trips behind me, I am totally jealous of their honeymoon.
Photo by Robert Schall Photography shot on Hasselblad 500 CM
Let me fill in a few details about my grandparents. My grandmother, a WWII widow, with my mother in tow, who at the time of this wedding was a cute girl of six and a half years, was getting married to the gentleman who would become my grandfather. Albeit step-grandfather, he was the only one I got to know. He was an Air Force pilot and WWII survivor, a tinkerer, artist, comedian, and the wonderful soul of a gentle and patient man.
Why this blog
While following their honeymoon tale, regaling myself on my grandfather’s photos, drawings, and spry humor, I was struck by how immensely important photos are. We spend a lot of time in our modern day and age snapping away photo after photo with our cell phones and all sorts of other devices. So many, that we are starting to lose a feel for how important and impactful images can really be.
Photo by Robert Schall Photography shot on Hasselblad 500 CM
Back in the days of film photography, it was not cheap or easy to preserve such memories. Having these kinds of moments captured and thus passing them on down the generations was precious. There was real intent behind each photo.
Here I was sitting, sipping a peaty whiskey, and getting a glimpse into who my grandparents were, reliving their moment 75 years later.
This one is personal
Bares repeating. This one is personal, not just because, in general, photos are, but because these are of my own family.
Photographs from the past are a rare insight into what was happening back then. They share a moment in time and provide a wealth of information that would otherwise have been lost. There is only so much that can be recounted in words. What is the old saying? ‘A picture is worth a thousand words.’
Totally true!
Photo by Robert Schall Photography
Just look at these pages. Look at how happy they (my grandparents) look. Ah, to be happily in love and young. There is also a kind of camaraderie/complicity inherent in the way they look at each other. There is more than just love between them. Seems they found a best friend in each other as well. One with whom they can share an inner joke with just one look.
We can glean all this information instantly from a photo. It would take so much longer to even get close to trying to paint such a picture with words.
The importance of photos
We live in a world where, according to phototutorial.com, roughly 57,000 photos are taken every second of the day. We are looking at over 1.8 trillion photos in a year. That is a mind-staggering large number.
Let’s just take a moment and try to put that number into perspective. If we use time, let’s say seconds, then 1.8 trillion seconds would nearly amount to 56,783 years. 57,000 years ago, the Neanderthals were still roaming the earth. There was a super volcano erupting, resulting in a 1,000-year ice age.
For a quick fun fact, our bodies have 1.8 trillion cells dedicated to defending it, which amounts to roughly the weight of a pineapple (1.2 kilograms). That is our immune system.
This number is just huge.
I think our ability, through modern technology, to take an ever-increasing number of photos is desensitizing us to the importance a photograph can have. Photographs, and videos for that matter, have become such a commonplace means of communication that I am not sure we still look at them with the same amount of attention to detail as we used to. Probably a natural progression to anything we get overloaded by. We don’t have the time to look at the smaller details contained in each image. There are just too many for us to look at.
What we take pictures of has drastically changed as well. We used to take pictures of things we wanted to remember or share with others. Now it is the age of selfies, the age of narcissism it seems.
And these illustrations
Maybe I am simplifying things here. This little DIY book from my grandfather, in itself, shows that there is also immense storytelling worth in illustrations. All the drawings my grandfather made, by himself, in this book, speak such volumes about his character.
He had such diversity in his drawings. Always with a large dollop of humor, he artfully used Cubism, Surrealism, watercolors, and pencil drawings to enhance, add to, and even illustrate moments of their trip.
Photo by Robert Schall Photography shot on Hasselblad 500 CM
Look here at his use of humor in a surrealist drawing, when they were forced to take a detour trying to get to Göttingen, near Kassel, (in, what then was, West Germany). Judging from his artwork I would guess there was some construction on a bridge. And note the horror-insinuating skull they had to detour to. What could have been so terrible on this detour?
Photo by Robert Schall Photography
With another masterclass illustration, my grandfather, in his infinite humor, aptly depicts the spine-breaking terror they had to endure.
Photo by Robert Schall Photography shot on Hasselblad 500 CM
What a clever use of cubism to convey the overwhelming chaos of big city traffic.
Photo by Robert Schall Photography shot on Hasselblad 500 CM
And his wonderful use of watercolors to paint this romantic landscape they are riding into.
Or these two illustrations, his use of two very distinctly different styles, to aptly convey the emotional state these honeymooners went through at these moments. From the anger and anguish when the clutch broke, to the coffee break at a relative's house while waiting for the repairs to be done.
(Yes, coffee time in Germany is like teatime in England, it does involve loads of little foods.)
A moment from the past
I guess, as a photographer, I have a fascination with photos from the past, from a time I did not experience myself. I can look at them for hours, studying all the little details, vainly trying to get a better feeling for what life was like then.
Oddly, photos of a time when I was alive, from times that I have experienced, have a different impact on me. Those tend to well up emotional memories. While older photos pique my curiosity to see into the past, to discover what life was like, so to speak.
Photo by Robert Schall Photography shot on Hasselblad 500 CM
My grandparents
By the time I met my mom’s parents, aka my grandparents, they were a well-established couple. They had had their shared experiences, had their routines, and, well, were a seasoned couple. Back then, growing up as a child, I, of course, did not pay attention to little things such as whether they were harmonious, were still in love, or whether they were affectionate to each other.
They were amazing grandparents! My grandmother was affectionate, playful, and nurturing. My grandfather was patient, mentor-like, and inspiring. His tinkering ability was so amazing. Needed to fix something, spruce something up, renovate, or just plain old hobby away at something, he had this crazy MacGyver talent to make things out of whatever was lying around at that moment.
I have so many fond memories of them and with them. We went on hikes, tended their garden in their little mountain house, and hunted for fossils. I still laugh today when I think back to how my grandmother would complain whenever she would call to table, that my grandfather disappeared to the bathroom for 5 minutes. “Günther, you knew I was cooking; you could have gone sooner!” she would grumble each and every time without fail. And he would keep going to the bathroom every time. It was their thing.
In hindsight, they were affectionate to each other, even in old age. There was always a good morning kiss before they ate breakfast, and at odd moments during the day, they held hands when walking, and had their cute little insider moments with each other. I guess growing up I just thought that was normal.
The images
When I decided to write this blog, I knew I would need some pictures to go along with it. I was ruminating as to how to take them. I wanted to, not only, evoke the moment when I was perusing, whiskey at hand, but also bring a little nostalgia into the photos too.
Why not shoot it with an old camera, I thought. Old memories from the old days with photos shot on a camera that was also old. Maybe not exactly from way back when my grandparents got married but at least similarly reminiscent.
All the pictures in this blog were taken with my trusty old Hasselblad 500 CM and Carl Zeiss Planar T* 80mm F/2.8 lens.
You will have to forgive me for using my wife as a model for the shots instead of these being self-portraits.
Honeymoon journal
I am so happy this journal-slash-collage-slash-scrapbook-slash-photo album survived and that I can reminisce about it. Sure, I only have a copy of it, courtesy of my own father’s foresight to make high-quality copies for the grandchildren, as the original is with my mother’s sister.
This couple, staring out of the pages of this, let’s call it, journal, that I grew up to know, over 23 years after they got married, were exactly everything that they looked like in this recollection of their honeymoon. The love, the humor, the adventurous spirit so nicely and very eloquently laid down in these pages, is every bit of what they were like so many years later when I was spending time with them.
I was ever so fortunate to have had these two amazing souls as my grandparents, and I cherish every moment I was able to spend with them dearly.
First published by Full Frame on Medium.com: https://medium.com/full-frame/images-with-memories-9e9a440855fd
