Someone asked me if my dad’s roll of Kodak Advantix film had been used, and I was certain it hadn’t, so imagine my heartache seeing these frames come back from the lab. This is my baby sister when she was still a baby sister. That’s the balcony at our old place; the same balcony she took her work calls on when we hung out at the same place when I was back there in January. It looks different now. So do we.
I didn’t expect to see these photos so quickly. I didn’t expect to feel the way I do right now either.
This roll is a Harman Phoenix I took with me to Lebanon but didn’t use; I figured I’d burn through it quickly to test my newest toy, but now these scans take on other resonances coming in the same zip file alongside dad’s black and white captures.
The same domesticities; the same displacements; the same hauntings. Or, some homology of the two. I don’t know.
My heart sees it.
This is the first photo I took with my dad’s camera the morning after I arrived back in Seattle. It’s become a ritual of mine to take a photo of ‘The Dreamer’ with every camera I own.
This was a Palm Sunday from God knows how many years ago, and in a week or so, it will be another Palm Sunday again.
There’s one more frame on the roll from that day; I’ll share that later. But hilariously, I’m nowhere to be seen. Classic me.
I don’t know if my dad knew that this roll was black and white, but it works.
This is my dad and my sister; I’m pretty sure that mom took the photo, which is the last surprise frame on the roll of Advantix I found in dad’s Kodak Preview. That’s the camera case he’s holding; it now hangs on a coat rack in my apartment.
I don’t remember this day at all. The most likely scenario is that I simply refused to go to church. And yet, this is how I remember my dad’s appearance when I pull up his image in my mind, despite it changing so much over the years that were to come.
This photo made me cry yesterday. I wasn’t prepared to see it, so that’s one reason why, but the more I looked at it and the more I thought about it, the more my gaze shifted from dad’s face to my sister’s. There’s something so tender about her expression, her lean towards dad, the way she’s standing and holding her Palm Sunday candle. Something about it breaks my heart.
She’s going to see this post, so my words feel clumsy and bound up, but I’m very glad to have this image.