Family History in Pictures
In the summer of 2002, I came into possession of a batch of pictures from my childhood and some pictures of my parents when they were young. I'm posting these pictures to the web page for two different reasons. As noted in my introduction to the pictures section, I feel it helps break down the barriers between students and professors when students are able to see into various aspects of their professor's lives and backgrounds. Secondly, the pictures are simply an interesting commentary on fashion and related changes (or lack thereof) over time -- some of these pictures are probably 70 years old, and most are from the 1950's.
Most pictures from those days were taken either by my father or by my uncle Wally (some by my mother or someone else). There's a story about my uncle that I feel relates to the extent the pictures are posed and how they are posed. After WW II (in the war my uncle had been stationed in Persia working on relocating displaced Jews), Wally was experimenting with becoming a professional photographer. During that period he took many pictures of the family and of other people -- I've seen only a few of the pictures that he took of other people. He died in 1996, and I've been told that most of his pictures were thrown out because they were not of family and because many were of unknown men and showed them in fairly risqué poses (Wally never married, and there was always a question as to whether he was gay).
Based on my knowledge of him and of my own father, I think the following pictures of me can be roughly sorted into those taken by Wally and those taken by my father or someone else. I have a sense that my father was uncomfortable with anything suggesting non-masculinity (he never acknowledged knowing that I was gay), thus I suspect that most of the more 'delicately' posed pictures are by Wally. Also, Wally had a studio for a number of years while my father took pictures in natural settings, thus any studio photos are probably by Wally.
All of these are scans of pictures that were stored in various boxes, cabinet drawers, etc. over the years and thus were in fairly rough condition. Some also were tiny prints that looked like direct transfers from the negatives, while others were large photos that appeared to have quite a bit of processing during the development phase. The pages are in roughly chronological order, simply click on the date link below:
mid-50's (1) mid-50's (2) late 50's
A final note
There are two pictures in the previous that best suggest, to me, my feelings about my mother -- the 'Chinese checkers' picture and the 'Kaiser' picture (click here for a separate page of those two). In my pre-teen years, mother never expressed any frustration with my 'bookishness' and never pushed to make me do what 'other boys did' -- instead, she provided emotional space, company, and support for what I wanted to do. This support diminished somewhat in my teen years -- but I was probably less accepting of it by then. Besides, my teen years coincided with my parent's divorce in 1960 (I was 12 going on 13) when mother had to work full-time and was beginning to have her own, separate, non-family life through dating (which was not easy for a woman who was single again at age 47 at a time when divorce was still considered to be very bad).