As long as I have existed, I have existed in images.
My mom and dad too,
their parents, and their parents, and
I don’t know how far back these folks go,
but they are in Oklahoma and the US Air Force:
Maternal grandmother’s family. My grandmother is the baby girl to the right as you look at the old photo. Old Photo Archives. All dead now. Full Permissions
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Dad (dead I sadly say) at work. He could make things work. US Air Force. Old Photo Archives. Full Permissions.
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For some people or organizations
I simply don’t exist in their images,
a little in their writings. You too. We all have birth certificates
and for however long we live
death certificates too.
We have other things too like health, living, and job
records that follow us around.
What else?
It could be a little or a lot
depending on how public you were for how long.
Empiricism is a thing of beauty that applies to most things.
I was the oldest sister. I had two younger brothers extant. We lived to tell the tale. Biggest brother here is dead. The third kid says okay to this image. Old Picture Archives. Full Permissions. My mom made our clothes back then. We match here.
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What that means is there are those things like images or writings we can access about each other but
that is still not everything that has happened to us,
nor everything that has changed us. We remain our
unique selves, always growing,
always changing,
filled with experience
unfolding,
and that recorded in images among other things.
Personal Photo Archives, me at the computer, iPhone8 selfie. Plant friends in the background. Full Permissions.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Dead Mother as the baby she was. Dad writing. Old photo archives. Full Permissions.
