Friday, March 27, 2009

To make pictures go where desired, and to make a very short post for tonight.  It is best to group images, perhaps, if there is more than one.
First, though my mother's had a pattern woven in, the backdrop made for these pictures was a curtain made of 'monk's cloth'.
Second, these pictures were taken by way of thanking relatives who had sent me new dresses for my 3rd birthday.  Like all the snapshots that were sent around to relatives, they record the color, the cloth, the sender, the date in green fountain-pen ink on the back.  The one at left was yellow dimity, that at right was described as 'peasant style'.  These came back t0 me from my eldest cousin on my father's side after my aunt's death, along with many others.  So these are photos that I remember from my parents' own albums.
Third, however, exceptionally, I remember the taking of them.  I was deemed sufficiently recovered from a 'flu' to be dressed and re-dressed and posed.  The monk's cloth curtain was rigged, probably over the screen door.  My father had the folding Kodak on a tripod on the front walk.  Though I liked picture-taking, I did not really feel up to smiling, but was glad to do everything asked (such as putting my arms as my mother thought appropriate to a peasant-style dress).  Five of these poses survive.  I hadn't been crying, but I'd been gotten out of bed.  It was also the occasion when I learned, when my father put the light meter to his eye (I must look up how that pre-photoelectric cell meter worked) and told me to look for the birdie, I did look every time (so my eyes are neither downcast nor shut).  Afterward, and for a long time thereafter, I kept at my father and my grandfather to let me look into the light meters so I could see the birdie (which, of course, I never saw).

No comments:

Post a Comment