Bringing Me Back Alive Through Paint...
The "ancient history" of those 1950s black-and-white photos
We've all seen those typical black-and-white photos—the ones that look the same whether they are from the 1920s or the 1950s. The 1960s brought color films and those Polaroid instant pictures that made you feel like it could be right now. But before that, all you had were vague images of some distant "history-book-like" past rather than a moment out of your own life.
Given my "baby-boomer, 1950s, origins," I, too, have loads of those old photos. In the one here, I know it's me, but it doesn't generate much sense of the time, place, or mood.
Certainly, if you study it, you can extract a lot of information from the photo.
For example, I can tell it’s a sunny day - either early morning or late afternoon based on the sharp angle of sunlight and shadows on my snowsuit, the car hood, and the tree trunk.
Given my knowledge of that location - Klug Hill Road in West Torrington, CT -- and which side of the tree and my snowsuit the sun is hitting, I suspect it is late afternoon.
Also, given I am wearing a snowsuit and the lack of tree foliage, I know it is a winter day. The overcast tinge of the sky against the background points to a typical “partly sunny-partly cloudy,” very changeable New England winter day. And the suggestion of clouds on the bottom left horizon further confirms the weather might change at any time.
The car is a Chevy sedan. Between the photo details, my knowledge of the car from family lore, my research, and my car-geek husband's knowledge of 1950s Chevy sedans, I know it is a light blue, 1954, 2-door Chevy Belair sedan.
The dented front bumper documents the frequent car accidents my father had back then, which my mother used to complain about during my childhood.
Based on my size, type of shoes, and clothing, as well as personal knowledge such as when I was born and details from a few other pictures of that day, I can estimate my age to be about 2 years old. So the photo is circa 1957.
And I am smiling. So, at the very least, at this moment life is okay.
So, yes, it is very possible to extract a lot of information from that black-and-white photo. Yet there is a distance to that photo and a distance to me. I can "analyze" that picture and deduce things, but I sure don't "feel me" or feel like I was real.
Now, consider the painted image.
Making her real and alive...
I didn't fabricate anything about it. Yet there is no denying it has a very different quality.
With color, it feels like “now”...
Something about color enhances that moment and infuses it with life, energy, and emotion. You don't have to deduce anything from shades of gray to feel the warmth of the late-afternoon sun on my body despite sitting on a cold car hood in front of a somewhat lifeless brown landscape. And there is the sense of the threat of a storm or "something," based on the darker clouds in the background.
Color also brings an immediacy to the moment that gray tones just can't. This is a moment that could be happening right now, old car notwithstanding. It is a way to bring the "me of that moment" back to life and "feel" her presence, her nature, and see her joy in living color right now, instead of lost in the shadowy cobwebs of ancient history.
And color adds more awareness of mood. The darker horizon clouds contrast sharply with the sunny spots of the field to give an uneasy quality to the scene. That joy and sun could evaporate in a moment and brightness is not guaranteed.
The eyes of the adult
Having enhanced that photo with an "in-the-moment" vitality, I get to look at me as if I am seeing my younger self right now, like a fly on the wallpaper of that event. As if I can walk right over, pick her up, and cradle her in my arms. I feel close to her.
But this time, I also get to see me, the young me, with my adult eyes and sensibilities. I get a chance to look again and maybe see things I missed back then, or missed all those times over the years when I glanced at that gray-toned image.
When something happens, we experience it and form perceptions of it that we’ll then carry forward with us through life. Yet, maybe those perceptions were mistaken, or we missed some glaring things. In that moment, we may not have understood what was really going on around us. We may have had no context for why it happened the way it did. Was there a fight going on just before the picture? Was someone's mood affected by more than what we were aware of?
Also, we may have thought of ourselves as fully formed, capable, and hence...responsible for whatever was being done to us at that moment. But the truth is we knew so little of life back then. We had no way of knowing what was really operating, what were peoples' motives, or what was coming for us.
So now, when I look at myself from that time so long ago...fully look at that moment with the eyes of an elder, I don't see a kid who was responsible for the abuse done to her. I don't see "damaged goods" or someone who failed to stand up to her father. I see this young, beautiful, vulnerable, pure being who had no idea what she was in for. I see myself as a precious "innocent," not as stupid, or responsible for what happened.
When I look at it now I feel joy, confusion, sorrow, and rage. First, seeing the joy on my face tells me it must have been a calm day in our household...a fun family time. Certainly, we had those over the years. And I think this is further affirmed by the fact that even years later, as an adult driving to my hospital lab job over those roads, I always loved that spot. As an adult, I would go out of my way to visit it -- loved the rural New England feel, the peaceful serenity of the area...even the cows munching grass in the fields. I felt the history of the place, with the engraved boulder nearby that recorded that this is where the town first started on these hillsides because the valley below where the main part of the town is now, was a mosquito-infested swamp. So THAT place was a happy moment.
But I also feel sorrow and heaviness because it reminds me of the complexity and confusion in our household. Yes, there were good things, but there were also so many violent and angry times. What does that do to a toddler, child, or young adult to be subjected to years of rapidly cycling moods -- the happy "good dad" one moment, and the rage-monster in the next?
And I feel rage, too. Because I know what is about to happen. That vulnerability and innocence were about to be used against her. That toddler who had her whole life and world of possibilities open to her was instead about to be hijacked down a whole different road.
Those clouds on the horizon that day were not just for that moment in time, but a foreshadowing of what was coming for her very soon. The sun was getting ready to set on her innocence. And the car whose hood she sat on was going to be one of the places where that innocence would be taken from her.
Lastly, it was seeing those images now as an adult that finally showed me how fully blameless, and helpless I was.
Who damned who?
I commented to my husband that I didn't realize just how small and powerless, and what an un-level playing field it was. "I was damned no matter how I tried to deal with him."
He responded, "You were damned the minute he chose you."
And in that moment I finally understood -- I wasn't damned by my choices but by his.
About the moments never captured on film?
This whole exercise of bringing my photo to life through art created a seismic shift in me. It blew open a well of pain I hadn’t even known was still there. It melted long-frozen emotions that I could finally begin to process. And it helped me start to find the words I’d been too overwhelmed to speak before.
But what really rocked me to my core was the question that came up after doing that painting — What about all those moments NOT captured on film?
Nobody ever took photos of what went on in our house “behind closed doors.” Those were the moments — trapped in my brain — that held answers to all the questions I had and that others asked.
What if I could see those moments right now in front of me, like that photograph? Re-examine them now as an adult. What would I see and learn about my past…and me? Would it make a difference?
At that moment, I knew what I had to do. And so began my three-year journey of painting in my quest for answers…