I currently have 106,645 photographs in a folder titled “My Lightroom Photos.” Thousands more were taken on film but not scanned, invisible witnesses to what I saw. I divided the images into categories, then subdivided them. “Travel” is one folder; under it are the places we’ve gone, say Turkey, Seville, Bhutan, etc. Several weeks ago I began to examine, discard, scan, and improve previously unseen and unremembered photographs of my family. Some are of Jadyne Jeung, my fianceé.
I posted about 100 of them on my website under the title, Yesterday. The images date from before we were married, each of our three children at various stages of life, focussing on the years we lived on either Brush Creek Road or Dutton Avenue in Santa Rosa. The latest are two from John’s UC Berkeley days, rugby games. Most end in middle school.
Jason in a crib, our four dogs, Jennifer and her blanket, Jason wrestling, Jennifer cheering, John in Tang Soo Do, kids reading and being read to, on playgrounds, in the studio, smearing spaghetti on their faces, spraying hoses, laughing, crying, looking sad, pensive, playful, and happy.
They haven’t seen most of these images. I’ve shown them hundreds more, but I wanted them to see these in particular, hoping that at their ages (John turns 45, Jennifer, 48, and Jason 50), they will see something that reminds them of what I hope they remember as a joyful, loving, and happy childhood, and remember that the adults in these photos (Jay, me, Teeny, and our mothers), loved them.
There are other adults that should be there, but I don’t have images of them with the kids—Al, Greg, Sean, and my brothers Jack and Bill, all who loved them as we did. In no particular order you can see them at…
P.S. More than thirty of these were taken when I was either selling furniture in Middletown, Ohio, getting a Masters’ Degree from Miami University in Oxford, or teaching at either Oxford’s Talawanda HS or Santa Rosa’s Cardinal Newman HS, years before I hung out my shingle as a professional photographer. Photography has been my life. Still is.