My parents grew up in urban factory neighborhoods, but they took advantage of the growing economy of the 1950s and 1960s to raise their own kids in the suburbs. They figured that is was nicer, more backyard space, less crowding, a better place to raise kids.
I pretty much took the suburbs for granted as a kid. Never knew anything else. Interestingly enough, one day I used the cheap little camera that my parents gave me to take a picture that kind-of sums up the suburban experience. It’s a car driving past a typical suburban house (typical, back when I was a kid, anyway). This could be the scene just outside any major industrial city in the USA, circa 1962. A family car and a house.
I don’t know why I took this picture. I never thought much of it, after it was developed and printed. But now I do. It does in fact capture something of the essence of where I grew up.
Jim,
I've myself noticed that pictures taken when I was young have a strange effect on me. They seems somehow to enable one to RE-LIVE the time and how one viewed life as it was lived at the time the picture was taken.
Another response I've had to "old" pictures is that as I look at the picture, I find myself again RE-LIVING what was going on among the people at the time. For instance: One picture I can think of particularly has all the people smiling and looking like a very happy family. Yet I remember that just before that picture was taken there was some kind of "disagreement" (which one just did not do with my father in particular) between me and my family. So, while everyone is smiling and looking happy, I know that under the surface I at least was filled with turmoil and distress and simply couldn't wait for the occasion to be over.
Yet there are other pictures that bring back truly happy times and make one very mostalgic.
So, perhaps pictures that one for many years didn't give much consideration somehow, as one lives to be old enough, allow one to RE-LIVE the time, the emotions, the situation of the time.
I'd say it's precisely that aspect of the pictures that makes them valuable to us.
MCS
Comment by MCS — December 7, 2009 @ 7:06 am