Visiting with family and friends, I went to check on a Polaroid Land Camera that I wanted to pass along to another Filmwaster (Satish) for wastering(™ Limr) film in an instant manner for the mutual benefit of the Filmwaster community and the universe at large. It turned out that there were still nine shots left in the pack. A pack that had been loaded years ago and was now quite expired and had been sitting in a walk in closet in none too optimal temperatures. I decided to shoot the pack and do a quick and dirty photo essay on my mother's apartment, the same apartment in which I grew up.
I moved out of the apartment just over 30 years ago and in the subsequent decades the apartments character has been formed by a mixture of change and inertia. Some objects and rooms remaining the same, others changing or being replaced or repurposed. The apartment is odd in that a few of the rooms are interior and therefore have no windows. My father, who died over thirteen years ago, was quite particular about light, an amateur photographer himself, and so the lighting in those interior rooms presents some interesting pools and shadows.
Books by
adoephoto, on Flickr
Books are a everywhere in the house. My father worked in publishing through the 60s into the early 80s and both of my parents were voracious readers. Of the six rooms in the apartment, five contain bookshelves and the other has a few small stacks of books lying about.
Living Room by
adoephoto, on Flickr
The living room. Those two photographs of the Flatiron Building and the Statue of Liberty, to either side of the French poster, are contact prints from an 8x20 large format camera.
End Table by
adoephoto, on Flickr
An end table in the living room. I like the way the shadow and light meet in the corner and theres something about the contrast of a stack of old and handmade books and the stereograph photo juxtaposed against a plastic bucket of coins that strikes me as odd.
Bird and Cookbooks by
adoephoto, on Flickr
Cookbooks, coffee grinder and really strange bird on a microwave oven. The bird was a gift from a family friend. It's large, imposing and, if you haven't grown used to it as we have, a bit unsettling. My mother jokes that if somebody ever gets rid of it bad luck will surely befall them. Satish and I were discussing this shot over beers yesterday and he thinks it's possibly Egyptian. I think it's African. If anyone has a more definitive opinion I'd love to hear it.
Library by
adoephoto, on Flickr
This is a small library created by my father when he divided a large room in two by building a wall. My mother is a quilter and the chair in the foreground is covered by one of her quilts that has been ravaged by multiple generations of cats. It's very telling in that though my mother spent a lot of time and effort creating the quilt, her devotion to her pets supersedes any attachment to something material.
Darkroom Despite by
adoephoto, on Flickr
The darkroom is a walk in closet that my father converted into a darkroom back in the late 1960s. I would stand with him as he developed prints and watch the images form in the developer. It is now just used for storage.
