Do you know what everyone in your family looked like?
We all live somewhere, be it on a park bench or in a stately home. We probably spend too much of our lives in the home. In the middle of autumn, it may take some effort to leave the bed at all. Since your life shouldn’t be boring just because you’re at home, we proudly present: Seven things you can do at home.
There is this old black and white photograph. I don’t know if it’s of my dad or me. I've looked at the photo thousands of times. There are no dates, no details or objects in the picture that may reveal what year it is. The facial features could belong to either my father or myself.
The photograph sits in a photo album with mixed pictures of members of my family. There are pictures of me until I'm about nineteen. That was when I left home. Then it gets sparse. I haven’t put in my own photographs in albums yet. They’re in shoe boxes in the basement.
A few years ago I lived in a weird neighborhood where drug addicts and the homeless often used my staircase for various shady purposes. One morning I awoke to a knocking on the door. It was my neighbor who wanted me to come down to the basement. My photographs were all over the basement floor smelling of urine. In one corner, I saw myself as a five year old. In another corner, I was two days old. My face tensed up with anger and I began to pick up my photos.
A few years later I’m sitting in front of my computer looking at all my digital photos. I know who most of the people in my pictures are. But in that black and white one, I am still not sure.
Text: Navid Modiri
Required time:
1 day or less
Cons:
If you have a lot of digital images it can take time to go through them. Another thing is that it’s a bit tough seeing how ugly one was as a child or teenager. It is okay to tear up the odd photograph. Or put them away in that same shoebox.
Pros:
You get an overview of who you were, who you are and can get a feel for who you can become.
