Farnham Family Photography { 12 Images of Christmas – Day 9 }
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A Christmas Snapshot from Christmas Past
I can’t believe we have already reached the 21st of December! Only four more sleeps to go until the big guy comes down the chimney and here we are at day 9 of my ’12 Images of Christmas’! Writing 12 blogs in 12 days has been such a fun and amazing challenge and I hope you have enjoyed reading them too! On Day 6 I wrote a short article reflecting on the pleasures of digital snapshot photography. You can read it here. Today my attention has turned to the familial love of old family photographs.
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Our old family photographs
They were taken on film, you sent them away to get developed and they were returned to you with a set of prints in a small paper packet. I remember very clearly, the delightful experience of Mum or Dad returning home with a new packet of prints! It was such an eventful experience!
I know I am not alone in my love of family snapshots. We have become such a sentimental and nostalgic generation of parents. If you were born in the 70’s or the early 80’s your life has been shaped by the dramatic development of the digital age.
Many of our big and little childhood events were recorded on film and then printed onto paper. By the time we were leaving University digital camera’s were becoming more affordable, prevalent and cheaper to use as we moved into our adult lives.
The end of analogue film photography simultaneously marked the end of our childhood. By the time we were having our own children the large majority of us are recording our family memories on iphones and digital cameras. This significant change in technology and the loss of our own childhood magnifies our sense of nostalgia for these family moments on bits of silver gelatin film and paper.
I grew up in New Zealand and every trip back I take some time to scan and store another box of our family photographs from when I was a child. It has become a labour of love and time is running away with us as I notice many of our families favourite moments from the late 1970’s are noticeably fading and losing their detail.
The imperfect family snapshot
When I decided to write about one of my own childhood family Christmas photographs I was in fact searching for an ‘ideal’ family Christmas portrait. The romantic in me had visions of finding a classic family Christmas photograph of us all pulling crackers at the dinner table or children sitting under the tree opening Christmas presents.
Looking back through our most up to date files of scanned images I found this black and white Christmas snapshot of my sister and I receiving gifts from Santa. This was one of only a few Christmas family photographs that I could find prior to the 80’s! For a short moment I was disappointed that I could not find that single perfect moment of us all together at Christmas time.
If you have read my blog post from ‘Day 8’, here, you will appreciate my disappointment even more and understand just why I like to give every family a truly connected moment in front of the camera, together.
The angle of this snapshot is awkward! The chairs are in the way! You can not see Santa’s face! It’s too hard to tell who is being given the gift first! This photograph was far from perfect! However, for all it’s imperfections, this is a much loved family photograph because we value our family photographs not for their artistic perfection but for the stories they tell.
So instead of discarding my plan to write an article here about my fond memories of a beautiful family Christmas image I now have the opportunity to consider what this image means to our family today.
A shared family story
Part of the joy of snapshot images is of course sharing them.
I hopped on the phone and called home this week. Two long phone calls and a few emails later my sister, my brother my Mum and even my husband all had something to say about this image. The conversations grew from the contents of the photograph to memories of those days when we lived in a little town called Twizel in New Zealand and how much we all miss our dear Dad.
Looking closely at the contents of this image I realise the funny angle and viewpoint of this photograph makes it all the more endearing to me. I can picture my Mum now, squeezing between the rows of seats, to grab this quick snap before she missed our turn with Santa. We are sure Mum took this picture as the very next image on the strip of film was one of Dad holding my little brother aged approximately one and a bit years old. He was also in the line to meet Santa and bless him, he had a really screwed up face and he was crying!
I am sporting a smart bob hair cut whilst my sister got to enjoy her long strawberry blond hair tied up in pigtails. You can see she had more freckles than me but I managed to surpass her in the freckle stakes later in life! Everyone noticed how similar my youngest son and I look at the same age. I was too young to really remember the details of this Christmas event but I do remember those matching corduroy dresses as kids. Mum says they were made by Nana Maxwell …… how much we miss her jolly smile and charming chats too.
This one single image managed to bring about so many conversations over this advent week. That’s a lot of family connection and a wonderful time reminiscing over how things used to be. Family images spark emotion, invite nostalgia and they managed to refresh all of our memories of early Christmases together from so many years ago. Looking at and talking about our family snapshots is a way of composing our families story. It’s as if we were continually adding to a collective family memory bank the more we spoke about this one special image.
I highly recommend trying this out with your family this Christmas. Pull out just one family image and it doesn’t need to be a perfectly composed image at all. They all tell your families story. Pass it around and see how far the story goes. If, like me, your maternal family are on the other side of the world, pass that image out over the digital airwaves, like I did this Christmas and talk about those memories. Enjoy your family pictures and have a very happy Christmas. x
