We used to have framed photos on the walls of our apartment:
there we were, on a rollercoaster.
there we were, wearing cowboy hats at night, illuminated by an endless garden of neon lights.
there we were, smiling beneath a windmill.
After a time (measured in decades) these treasured memories began to overtake their allotted space. They dominated their canvas rather than artistically augmenting it - each picture was 1000 words, but together they formed a massive novel. We even tried that HGTV thing with a dedicated “wall of frames”, but it made us a little claustrophobic.
So, when we moved into a new apartment where we had a bit more space, we ended up putting very little on the walls. This proved a wise strategy during COVID, where the unintended mockery of being surrounded by images of ourselves out in the world having fun with the sky and the fresh air and the wide open spaces would have driven us stark raving mad.
Thus many of our physical photos, even the fancy framed ones, are still in storage. Ironically, for the past seven years we have only seen them on the AppleTV screen saver, in the background of photos of us in our old apartment.
A few weeks ago I delved into the wicker IKEA box containing the majority of our printed photos. The box is not organized, and holds photos from both my wife and I: grade school, high school, college, even family photos of our parents, their parents, and a few of our great grandparents.
Our aim was to digitize the lot, but given that we’ve (so far) seen six different formats of magnetic and optical storage, each making the former obsolete, this wicker box remains the most stable archival option.
It’s fun to find a picture of us drinking out of a glowing fishbowl at a Star Trek themed restaurant, then a print of Zoe’s formally dressed, sepia-toned and serious-as-all-get-out great grandparents. Though admittedly there doesn’t seem to be a clear theme to the collection, I discovered that in both of our families (and perhaps in every American household) there are two photographs that everyone seems to take.
The first is the specific look prompted by the word “CHEESE!”. It is not exactly smiling, it’s kind of a…grimace, I guess. As a little kid we all would say it and then kind of laugh, because the sound of any group of people saying “cheese” is a little bit funny, and usually that flash of amusement was the moment caught on camera.
Everyone (past the era of the sepia portrait) has a CHEESE photo.
The second photo that everyone takes was a bit of a surprise. In our collection, I found pictures of my grandfather, my mom, myself, my wife, and my daughter doing the exact same thing:
blowing out candles on a birthday cake.
There we all are, from four different eras: leaning forward, somehow smiling while our cheeks are fully puffed.
I happen to know that the photos with my grandfather, my mom, and myself share the same pound cake recipe, with handmade icing, created by my Grandmother. It was “The Birthday Cake”; so solid a tradition that when I was in college my mother would bake one, freeze it solid, and send it to me at school. My roommates laughed until they tasted it, then fought over the last slice, and sought me out the next year for another one. It’s a good cake, one of the “top five things made of wheat that I miss now that I’m decidedly celiac”, along with Twizzlers™ and Guinness™.
I also know that the traditional “Happy Birthday” song was sung in all the photos. (We don’t add anything on the end, like “Are you one? Are you two?” because the answer is right there in front of you, blazing away…it isn’t really a “pop quiz” worthy challenge.)
And no milk was drunk with the cake, because we’re all allergic.
People have been blowing out birthday candles for centuries (thanks Artemis), though I cannot imagine the ancient Greeks creating quick charcoal sketches of the moment. But I do find the ritual soothing.
Our household is heading into “birthday season”: in somewhat of a row we have my wife’s birthday, then my daughter and mom (a few days apart), and then my own. Three of us are hitting “signifiant milestones”, this year, so we’re a bit more sentimental than usual, insuring that even more birthday photos will be taken.
So I am going to put the family birthday cake snapshots in a frame, side-by-side, and hang them on a wall somewhere. Home photography seems a pretty stable hobby, and this tradition seems pretty culturally ingrained - so no matter how the world changes, there’s a pretty good chance that my great-great-great-great granddaughter could build herself a delightfully whimsical photo wall. Y’know, if walls are still a thing.
