WRITING ABOUT FAMILY IN A HISTORIC CONTEXT

Somewhere They Are Smiling, Seven Generations of Women descended from Starrs. Photo Montage by Ruth Zachary

The Photography Effect

            Photographs furnish evidence.

            Something we hear about, but doubt,

             seems proven when we're shown

             a photograph of it. Susan Sontag.

Was it the invention of photography

that affirmed that women existed?

Or was there a shift in thought,

because women were educated

to read and write, and now could

record their maternal connections?

Was this a small act of subversion,

or was it a Dutch tradition for women

to stay in touch with relatives no matter

how far removed by patrilocation

or resettlement in a new nation?

Whatever the reasons, a shift occurred.

sisters, aunts, cousins, nieces, grands -

grandmothers, grand daughters, greats -

All kept abreast of each other’s lives,

remembered their family names and

proudly passed down their traditions.

Eliza and Laura Starr may have

valued the Starr name enough

to make sure their lineage was recorded.

Ancestors came from other countries,

and in the 1800s descendants were

already migrating  west.

Newly invented, photographs were

collected by those who could. Eliza

had pictures taken of her first daughter.

Laura tried to pass this tradition

on to her daughters and grand daughters.

Laura's daughter Lillian did her share,

and Ava, Laura's grand daughter,

attempted to as well,

as if historic preservation was their charge,

and by inheritance, it is now mine.

Photography is a means of capturing time.

We all owned and recorded a lineage

in a treasury of photographs,

All perhaps were motivated as well by

seeing the future end of their family line.

Pictures also mean almost nothing if names

are not recorded, so temporary is the flesh.

Pictures also mean little without

the recorded stories of real lives.

Even the old photographs and tintypes fade,

obliterating the details of those serial

ancestral lives as they pass into yesterday.

Interestingly, and sadly, the common

access to cameras and digital photography

has made saving photographs

seem less important.

Once lost, a likeness cannot be recovered.


This writing was stimulated by questions about family history. I wrote a book about my mother's lineage, to pass on to my grandchildren, but it is a book mostly about my parents, whose life experiences are recorded in the era of the Great Depression. Many people could relate to the things they lived through and survived.

Images and Writing on this post are the Copyright © of Ruth Zachary


This poem was published in Theories of Relativity, written in 2012 , Published by Xlibris and is  Available on Amazon.