Photoalbum
The quick ripping of thick tape and the heavy thuds of cardboard boxes echo throughout an empty, unfamiliar, and lonely house. As the boxes are slowly opened and their contents revealed, my heart jumps for joy. There, within that scant and unexpectedly durable shell of cardboard, lie my invaluable possessions. After removing the bubbly layer of protection from my valuables, I begin to place them, one by one, around the new room.
I first lift out my old camera. Though dusty and unpolished, it reminds me of the summers I spent in India incessantly clicking images of everything in sight. It reminds me of my one constant passion in life – photography. My camera has travelled with me thousands of miles across various cities in the world, captured a multitude of cultures and stored memories and the vastly different experiences that have defined my life.
I return to the box to pull out a thick, navy blue photo album. The dust flies off the cover as I blow across the surface. I flip through the pages, pausing to glance at the collection of pictures of my family I have compiled through the stages in my life:
My nieces and nephews playing tug of war. It’s not a great shot, but it was the effort of a twelve year old me trying to immortalise a moment. The kids tightly wrap their hands around the rope, grounding their bare feet into the freshly mown grass. I am taken back to the echoes of innocent laughter that surrounded me during that moment. The game of tug of war might seem dull to some, but the kids’ faces sparkled with glee.
Our family home. One would experience every aspect of nature once stepping out the front door. Or even while looking out the window. A colourful sunset and slow sunrise. Endless greenery and life. The shot covered everything from the cobblestone walkway that led to the entrance to the rows of covered vegetation planted together in groups and the variety of flowering bushes.
It was a picture of silent beauty.
Another shot captured my family as they sat comfortably, eating and chatting under lamps that lined the stone outer wall of our home. The sun had dipped behind the trees as purple dusk began its mission to take over the sky and prepare it for nightfall. My fingers lightly traced my mother’s soft smile as she watched the animated expression on my father’s face as he presumably recounted one of his hilarious stories. The photo was filled with so much warmth. I couldn’t help but smile.
As I thumb through some more pictures in the album, I come across a photo which saw my cousin wedged between the elders of our family. They were settled on the pasture outside our home, huddled under the same blanket. My cousin was looking up with his hands behind his head. My grandmother had dozed off, a peaceful expression on her face, her mouth slightly open. Flipping the page to the next photo, I see the addition of my own face to the gathering under the blanket. The photo captured my face mid-laughter, a softness in my eyes, my hands resting on my cheeks.
On nights that were clear and unseasonably warm, a few of us would take a blanket out into the pasture behind our home to lay out and gaze up at the sky. It made me feel small, overlooked, but I liked that. The worries that fluttered in and out of my mind, everything that culminated and threatened to consume me — it was less overwhelming whenever I inhaled, exhaled, and reminded myself that I was just one person in the middle of something much larger – the universe. And I knew my place in it. I was vital to few, important to some, a face in the crowd to others, and a stranger to most. Overall insignificant in the greater cycle of nature. There to serve my purpose. To live life the best way I knew how.
With a last glance, I tape the pictures to the wall facing my bed. The photo album is empty now, unlike the room. With each picture comes its own story, and collectively, they create a collage of my family’s happiest moments. My father would say that the essence of collecting and capturing is to hold on to something for the purpose of experiencing it when it becomes more precious. Every sound, every colour, every photon, every little everything has been absorbed into me one way or another, yet these experiences, although insignificant to others, mean the world to me. Through my photography, I find myself treading through my own trail of growth and development.
