Friday, August 5, 2011

Family Images from the past...

My mother, sister and I recently went through some old photos.
We sat on the sun filled deck here in the Humble Bungalow garden and sipped freshly made iced tea and noshed on some antipasto, crackers, and a round of brie cheese.
My sister and I wanted to have copies of many of these images as Mother is the keeper of the albums.
I am planning to have these copied and will go hunting for some frames and plan to set up a photo gallery somewhere in the Bungalow, a shrine for want of a better word, paying homage to my family and my roots.


Father atop a sandstone rock in the BC Gulf Islands


Mother sitting on a rocky seashore
and I see my love of scarves has been inherited!


I think they make a fine pair.


No fish tales needed here
a picture is worth a thousand words!


Dad and his dog in the front yard of his family home.

Black and white images
are so evocative and rich in detail.

I love vintage family photos
they show us a bit of what we have forgotten
a time long past that can be revisited
remembered 
and 
shared.

Some of the photos are forced and staged
(say cheese!)
while others are taken quite spontaneously
capturing the reality and honesty of that moment so many years ago.

I got quite emotional looking through all the images...
so many of the people in the pictures have passed away
not to be forgotten
but to be remembered with love.


Mother and my cousin.

If you have a family member that you have been neglecting
try and make contact with them this weekend
phone, visit, or write them a letter.
You'll be happy that you took the time and made the effort
and it might just make their day a little brighter knowing that they are thought about by you.

Spread a little joy wherever you go this weekend.

Hostess
XO



18 comments:

sparrowsandsparkles said...

wow! love these. Thanks for sharing :)

the gardener's cottage said...

love these old photos leslie. i have a weakness for them too. also, thank you for all your sweet comments on my blog. you are the best and sweetest.

xo
janet

Sue/the view from great island said...

I love your photos. I inherited the position of keeper of the family photos and I had many of them framed. I had a whole wall in our den covered with various family photos from different generations and branches of the family. We would quiz our kids on who was who as they were growing up. They are in storage right now as our life is in transition, and they are the thing I miss most.

Susan B said...

These pictures are just wonderful and so evocative. It's been such an adventure to go through all of our old family photos. It brings back memories, but also gives one a sense of the person who was more than just a parent/grandparent.

LPC said...

They are so stylish, and yet it was clearly simpler days in many ways.

La Vie Quotidienne said...

You are so lucky to have these, they are wonderful and with such glorious memories.

mette said...

Old pictures are so decent. They were taken sparingly, compared to how we now snap a picture or five, just like that.
I have the family pictures, my firstborn has part of them too.
I´m not really feeling up to going over them yet, as memories, the not nice ones, return to my conscious.

Anonymous said...

What beautiful old photographs, you are so lucky to have them, I have very few, my mum isn't sentimental and threw out most of ours, I managed to salvage just a few.

Judith said...

I love the mysterious feel of old black & white photos...have made collages of most of mine and they hang in the cloakroom so I can enjoy them daily.

Have you thoughts on how you will show your beautiful B/Ws? Ida

Share my Garden said...

Dear Hostess, this is such a lovely, and valuable blog. I am now the holder of our family photographs, a case full of them. While I can recognize my immediate family forebears, sadly a great many of the other faces are unknown to me. My mother's sight and hearing was so poor in her final years that, although we poured over the images with a magnifying glass, she failed to identify very many. Don't leave it too late to collect all the wonderful memories from your Mom.
I have written down some of my parents' recollections, which I intend to include in a book for my next big '0' birthday!

annie@mostlovelythings said...

Leslie,

your old photos are wonderful...a collage wall featuring these would be wonderful. Each of these has a glamorous aspect to it. I agree with LPC, so stylish indeed!

xo annie

pavlova said...

Lovely and timely post Leslie. I have recently purchased some frames to
make such a black and white photo wall in my home.
PS. I will email about my love of the LBD you pointed me to! xo

Anonymous said...

I love the photographs of your family. They are excellently taken; I thought some of them were shots of the Kennedy family at Martha's Vineyard.

the veg artist said...

What a lovely post. I have very few photos of my parents, and next to no memories apart from of sadness and loss. I cannot remember my mother at all, and it still hurts, over 50 years later.

Pondside said...

What a sweet post.
When I look at photos of my parents as young parents, themselves, I feel oddly protective of them - that glimpse of them before the erosion of time, the worries when raising teens etc is a like a glimpse into their dreams and their hopes.
I'm the keeper of photos in our family and have tried to ensure that every one is documented with as much information as possible.
This post has obviously struck a chord with many.

materfamilias said...

Lesley, that third photo especially is as stylish as any of the vintage photos The Sartorialist has been posting lately and I'm sure it would be a welcome addition to his series. I've just spent a day with our 4-generation family, and luckily, one of my sisters remembered to get the classic everyone-on-the-stairs photo before we started to break apart. Lately we've been enjoying poring over old photos with Nola, who marvels at what her mommy looked like when she was a little girl. . . . you'll soon be doing this with Isla.

Susan Tiner said...

I second Mater's vote to submit the photo of your mother and father to the Satorialist.

hostess of the humble bungalow said...

ida- I do and will try to take a photo of the images in their new frames.

Rebekah- I suppose that black and white photos show people in an honest light...whereas the Kennedy's are monied and privileged, we are from a humble class...but I did like that comparison!

Susan Tiner- I did send an email link but I think he gets thousands of emails so it might take some time if he decides to post it...fingers crossed!