Damaged Goods ~~ A "Sepia Saturday" Post

This week's Sepia Saturday theme deals with the less-than-perfect photos that we've all taken at one time or another. For me, those would probably be many images taken when I was in high school, briefly studying photography when I was a member of my school's Audio-Visual Club.

Unfortunately, I destroyed the “evidence” years ago.

My mom's side of the family had a minor love affair going on with the camera, but if there were any shots which were inadequate in any major way – and I'm sure there were – they were thrown out like my own poor attempts years later.

Therefore, I've decided to focus – the pun is unavoidable – on a few photographs which survived, although severely damaged.

1. This jigsaw puzzle masquerading as a photograph actually shows myself and my kindergarten classmates in the Fall of 1961. (And luckily for me, I have a black & white 8” x 10” of the same image.) Where am I, you may well ask, since there's no one there dressed in black, nor wearing a beard? Heh. I'm the second on the left in the front row... the one whose attention is focused elsewhere. Believe it or not, 50+ years later, I can still name most of the children in that photo. And if any of you are wondering – and I know some of you are – out of the seven girls in my class, I had crushes on three of them.

2. I used this next photo in a much older Sepia Saturday post. I'm repeating it with my original description attached and only slightly edited..

The following shot is one I couldn't even begin to restore. Surprisingly enough, the first time I ever saw it was at my mother's apartment, only a few years ago. Quite frankly, it's trashed... yet it's obvious why my mother saved it, preserved from further damage in a little Ziploc bag along with a piece of cardboard to keep it from bending.

It's a picture of my mom's sister Josie, lovingly holding her fifteen-years-younger sibling, my mother Anita. (It's also one of the few early shots of my mom actually smiling, rather than grimacing due to -- I assume -- the era's annoying necessity of the photo's subject(s) having to stare into the blinding sun whenever photographs were taken!) What's left of the caption hand-written in ink on the lower border reads "Sisters" and "April." (Although a lot of these little notations have faded into illegibility over the years, I remain grateful to my mother and whoever else supplied these bits of written information on the various early family photos. It's helped me a lot in terms of names and dates, obviously.)

Going through literally hundreds of photos as I began this task of posting my family's history, I was frustrated at the missing lower right-hand corner of this photo, however. "April of what year?" I wondered. I estimated it as being between 1921 and 1923. But luck was with me. In with a separate group of photos, I found one of Aunt Josie, standing alone on the very same steps, in the very same outfit, plainly labeled "April, 1922." So my mom was four-and-a-half years old, making this the second-oldest photo of her that I have! 

And here's the shot from April 1922 that helped me to solve the mini-mystery!

 

3. Hm. Not sure who tore this next photograph in half, but it sure looks deliberate!

 This shot of myself, age 5 or 6, proves once and for all what I've been claiming for years: I am a superhero!

4.  I recently posted about how my mom saved practically all of my dad's papers from his service in World War II.  Unfortunately, aside from a sole baby picture, there are no photos of my father from before their 1940 wedding. My Aunt Irene (my father's sister) once told me that my dad was quite a good dancer in his younger years... a talent sadly robbed from him, due to his WWII injuries.

I can't place a date on this photo, but I have to assume it was taken in the early 1940s. I also have to assume that his dancing partner is my mom. This horribly scratched-up snapshot was probably kept as a reminder of better times...

And after all, isn't that what most photos do? Remind us of better times? That often seems to be the case.

And, as always, thanks for your time.