Photographic memory
My grandfather was quite a photographer, as it turns out. This picture, of my grandmother and her brother, as well as the one of my mother I posted on Mother’s Day, were scanned in from a huge collection of 3D slides my grandfather took from about 1950 to 1955. I’m struck by the different look everything had: not alien, but slightly exotic. This slide is a good example of this, I think. It’s like an alternate universe.
I love the picture! There’s something really intriguing about it that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s very surreal. This should be enlarged and framed.
The eerie thing for me is that normally old pictures are faded and dim — when slides are transferred to film or digitized, though, they’re beautiful. This is a picture that could have been taken yesterday if not for the remarkable differences in hair, clothing, and the range of things you’re likely to see on the table.
And there’s still something else about people’s faces that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s why period movies are never completely immersive for me — actors just can’t look like they’re really in the fifties.