Taking pictures has been a passion of mine since I was a teenager, when you had to develop negatives and print them on paper. So photography came with a cost. I wasn’t particularly good at it, but I captured moments and emotions.
I have family photos from 50 years ago that my uncle took. My uncle the architect, whose passion for painting I also inherited.
For the longest time I immortalized trips, events, gatherings, by snapping a few timely pictures. And, to a degree, friends and family started to rely on me to snap a few pictures and document moments in time.
My kids relive their childhood through 3 dozen books I made during the first 7-9 years of their time with us. I captured many beautiful moments, and I think I delighted to observe the world through their eyes. Many of these albums / photo books don’t particularly have me in them. Here and there occasionally I am in the picture. I’m not shy. I enjoy having my picure taken …but nobody around me takes pictures. I document our home life, when conrad plays boardgames with the girls, when he reads, when he walks hand in hand with them… And though I spend more time with the girls than he does, at bed time, chatting, cooking, reading to them, reading alongside them and often walking hand in hand, nobody takes pictures of me with them.
For one trip I made an album and Jackie asked me where I was when she went on that trip. I was there. Taking the pictures. She was young and doesn’t remember but I do. I felt sad that there were no visual cues, mementos of me on that trip as well.
I had asked Conrad to snap a few pictures without prompting occasionally. Just as we live life. I’d like to be in some photos without looking at the camera or asking him to take a picture of me with the girls.
Because I’m not photographed alongside my family, I do feel invisible. And I wonder if I’m vain for feeling this way. I don’t even care if I look good, if I’m well dressed or if I’m smiling in pictures. I just want to be in them sometimes without asking someone to include me in the photos. The group selfies don’t count. I don’t much like them.
Moms are often invisible. Maybe dads are invisible too when they are absent. But the only way I could feel at ease again was to go on strike and not take any pictures at all. Not one. And then those memories are kept only as a feeling deep inside.