My father loved to take pictures. Not only professionally, but snapshots of family and friends as well. The only problem was that he was not very good about printing up the pictures once they were taken or organizing the prints into albums. He would often take his camera with him when he and my mother were invited out to a party or a weekend in the country and take lots of shots. The pictures were great – but it sometimes took months or even years for the pictures to be printed up and sent off to his friends.
Even I was not immune from such treatment. It seems hard to believe, but my father never got around to printing up pictures of my Bar Mitzvah. Forty years later, and I still haven't seen them! My father did print up many family pictures, particularly after his grandchildren were born. However, he never got around to organizing them into family albums.
My wife, Janice, once made the mistake of asking my father if he had any pictures of me when I was a teenager. This was shortly after we had married and Janice wanted to know what I looked like without a beard. My father was delighted to show her the family pictures. He retrieved a dozen large boxes full of pictures from a closet in our home and piled them up on the dining room table. He opened the first box, pulled out a picture of my mother with Picasso, and started telling Janice about the first time he photographed Picasso, including how Picasso made a pass at my mother. He pulled out another picture and told Janice the story about the time he photographed Mondrian, and how Mondrian asked his advice about the placement of a line in one of his paintings. Well, this went on for hours. My father was having the time of his life pulling out photo after photo and telling Janice some of his favorite stories. At the end of the third hour, the dining room table was covered deep with photographs. Poor Janice was nodding off and she still hadn't seen a single picture of me!
Eric Newman