Nicaragua and Indiana, Tortillas and S'mores
If I had to give one and only one reason why photographs are important to me, it would be that they tell us who we are and where we came from. We are the products of the people and places that have brought us to the present and photographs are an honest way to tell that history. They help us see the present, connect us to our past, and they are what gets remembered in the future.
I have had the pleasure of including so many grandparents in my family sessions recently, and they are honestly my favorite. Not too long ago, I went through my old photos to try to find a picture of me with my own grandma as a kid. I couldn't find one. There might be one in someone's collection somewhere, but I don't have any, and I don't remember ever seeing one. This is pretty crazy since I lived only a mile away from my grandparents for my entire childhood. One mile away. I saw them all the time, yet that part of my story is missing in my photographic record, and it's a pretty big part of my story. The next time I am home visiting family, I will certainly be going through our photos to see if I can find one.
Laura reached out to me about documenting her family on her oldest son's birthday when her mother from Indiana and her mother-in-law from Nicaragua would both be visiting. Yes, yes, absolutely! Here are these two women who mothered their children in different cultures and somehow their children found each other and now here they are all together in a totally different place. This to me is everything, a visual narrative to a piece of family history. I think these are the types of photos that matter, the ones that bridge the gap between the past and the future. It's truly a pleasure to be a part of telling a family's legacy, and getting to take home a bag of warm homemade tortillas wasn't so bad either.
