B&W Photos

Our family did not have much money. I wouldn’t say we were poor. We had everything we needed to survive. It’s just that some of the things that I saw my friends had seemed out of reach for us. For example, a good friend Jim got a Porsche for his sixteenth birthday. I got a dog, which was also partly my Christmas gift since my birthday is in November. The funny thing is that I didn’t envy my friends. Interesting things always happened in our home, and my vivid imagination only heightened the experience.

Regardless of what we didn’t have, my mother always made sure that she had a two-week vacation somewhere. The youngest children also went along. Even though my grandparents had a cottage, this was never available to us. For many years, our vacation home was a cabin the size of some peoples’ tool sheds at Lake Simcoe. While I remember the size being small, it was adequate for our needs. What I remember most was fun we had and reading ten-cent comic books while listening to the radio.

We always use to document our vacation using a huge Kodak box camera. I’m not sure if there was colour film available, but all of our photos were in black and white. Sometimes mom would let us take a picture, but she made sure that we were serious about what we took. Wasting a picture was something that just couldn’t be done.

We would get the photos back and fondly look at our vacation. It’s funny how our two weeks were summarized in about 24 snapshots. With digital cameras these days, you usually have over 200.

Sometimes we would look at the negatives. The whole world was inverted. It also gave us an idea of what we would look like if we had black skin.

What amazed me is that to make a beautiful picture, you had to shine a light on something that was dark. On a piece of photographic paper, the shadows became light and the areas where the light could get through became dark, with many shades in between.

In my life, there have been times when I have felt like those negatives. Everything seems so inverted and unrealistic. When light passes through these negative experiences and I see the result, I often see the wisdom I have gained. I sometimes marvel at the strength and courage I have shown. The beauty of the print somehow gives me satisfaction with the result.

But I have to let the light shine through. To me, that light is truth. It is only under the purity of the light of the truth that a true picture forms. Anything light that is not pure will only make an image that is less than true.