Alexandra Elizabeth — Photographs — Alex Waterhouse-Hayward
Thinning out files of lawyers and businesspeople is onerous but not heart wrenching. Sifting through many hundreds of family pictures is heart wrenching. And it cannot be a quick deal as I must stop and show Rosemary, “ Look at this picture of Hilary. Do you remember?”
Today I found and made a pile of about 32 Polaroids. Our daughters are pre-teenagers. The camera in question was a Polaroid SX-70. It compensated for so-so photographs by the virtue that they were instantaneous. In Spanish a snap is called an instantánea. I wrote about the history of Polaroid here.
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With further thought today it occurred to me that a Polaroid is an example of an all-encompassing object that is a memory and I can hold in my hand. There is no negative in the files or a picture in the back display of my Fuji X-E3. The Polaroid is that moment in the past somehow becoming an instant as I retrieve the place and the time.
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My Rosemary with Alexandra Elizabeth
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Rosemary Elizabeth with our daugthers Hilary Anne and Alexandra Elizabeth bottom left
Into Bunny Watson. I am a Vancouver-based magazine photographer/writer. I have a popular daily blog which can be found at:http://t.co/yf6BbOIQalexwh@telus.net
