For my grandmother, Blanche Kaiser, every moment was a Kodak Moment. My earliest memories—playing tiddlywinks on the kitchen floor, the annual tree lighting in the city square, stuffing my face with M&M’s—are less recollections and more records, thanks to the fact they all took place in front of a camera. At any moment, my Nana would fish out her purple-clad Android phone and take a snapshot of the family in every form. My formative years felt like they revolved around how we would remember them. Whether at a holiday get-together, an aquarium jellyfish exhibit, or just the local diner—any situation could be interrupted with a flash of light and a plea to “smile.” Like most ornery children, I hated having my picture taken. I could not wrap my feeble little mind about why anyone would care about 2015-me “meeting” Thomas the Tank Engine in my toothy grin and Angry Birds T-shirt. My protests were always met with the same justification: “one day you’ll look back at these and be thankful.” After grumbling and moaning, I’d muster a smile anyways and brace for the impending black splotches that would cloud my retinas after the flash.
Blanche ensured every photo she took was printed out. Her penchant for family photography was only matched by her husband, Denny. The walls of their home were tiled with portraits and collages—their shelves and bureaus armed with legions of frames of different shapes and sizes. Her craft room was laden with photo albums and containers overflowing with 4X6’s and 5X10’s. On the back of each image were dates and scrawled explanations of the photograph’s subject.
“July, 1988. Beth and I. Stoneharbor.”
“Christmas morning, 2012. Kids opening presents”
During our many sleepovers, I would retrieve a leather album and sit on her lap while she identified family members who had been dead long before I was born. Any detestation I had dissipated once those covers opened. I would take each photo out and thoroughly examine it, much to her dismay (she didn’t want one of the remaining copies of my great-great-great grandparent’s church directory photo to have grubby fingerprints left behind). Cradling me on her lap, she chronicled each person, the intricacies of their lives, and the quirks that made them unique. No matter how many “greats” separated us, Nana’s storytelling transcended time. Her tales were vivid—it was almost as if I had been there when the photo was taken.
When Blanche died in 2018, she had over 12,000 photos left on her phone camera (her digital camera was stolen in a 2008 burglary). Combined with the physical prints stashed throughout her home, the sheer volume of photos she’d taken made it arduous to choose photographs for the funeral. My mom and her sisters—Suzy and Chrissy—each took a pile, rifling through until they found an image that seemed to capture her essence.
“Oh, Beth, look how little you were,” cried Chrissy, passing around pictures of Nana holding my mom on her first birthday.
“Who let you have that haircut?” my mom retorted, holding up her sister’s 10th grade yearbook photo.
“Look at how gorgeous Mom looked,” Suzy said, showing us Blanche in her mid-century poise: a gentle 1960s bouffant with short curls on each side, soft cat-eye glasses perched on her nose, and a crisp collared blouse. Looking off into the distance, her warm smile is what makes her instantly recognizable, long after the hairspray fizzled out and she traded in her sharp lenses for a more sensible ovular pair.
The hours spent poring over Blanche’s collection proved that we hadn’t just lost a matriarch, but an archivist. Cutthroat card games and Toy Story marathons were just as important as first communions and weddings. For years after the afternoon with my aunts, I couldn’t bring myself to look at her photo albums. How could I view an endeavor she had dedicated herself to without being reminded of who was no longer behind the camera?
Out of this tragedy, however, an indissoluble bond had been formed between my Poppop and I. At least once a month, we would go vinyl record shopping—bonding over our shared love of music and the thrill of collecting. I’d sleep over at his house the night before, formulating our plan of attack over a bowl of ice cream.
One July night, I could not sleep. The basement was sweltering, and I longed for the comfort of a cool stream of air. Creeping upstairs, I found solace in a wicker chair positioned in front of a rickety window unit air conditioner. And directly in my line of sight was a photo album with my grandmother’s signature cursive “Family Photos” on the side. I began paging through, spying the usual suspects: my sister and I immersed in a pillow pet display at the local supermarket, walking on the New Jersey Boardwalk, and husking corn. I took a photo of Nana and me out of its protective sleeve. The Inkjet gloss’ abrasive rub against my nails, I traced the silhouette of her brunette hair, squinting to make out the details that had been blurred over time. I tried desperately to remember what it was like to have her arms wrapped around me, just like the picture showed. Clutching each timely memento, I began to cry. How grateful I was to have these pieces of her.
Paging through the photos my grandparents had spent the better part of their lives cultivating, I got a better sense of Nana and Poppop, but also of Blanche and Denny, who lived full lives before I came into the frame. Faintly, I heard my Nana recounting stories of our time together and of times long gone. The bravery of Charles Kaiser as he parachuted into rural France during D-Day. The hospitality of Kathleen Kaiser as she prepared for her monthly supper club. The eccentricity of Katherine Farrell as she serenaded audiences —after admonishing her husband for only ordering Patsy Cline records in their hotel juke box. Despite the fifty years elapsing between their deaths and my birth, these stills, and their accompanying stories, awakened an intense bond.
There is something deeply intimate—almost visceral—about such a simple commemoration of a loved one. In our modern age, photographs are seen as disposable. With a single click, a subject is banished to the purgatory of a camera roll, waiting to be revisited and, more often than not, forgotten. Nostalgia only arises if a lucky image is chosen to be printed, perhaps hung on a dorm room wall. Even rarer is the kind of memento that Blanche kept, tucked safely away in an album and labeled on the back. There is a profound difference between encountering a family member through physical preservation and viewing them on a digitized screen. To rescue a photograph from this nether region and enshrine it in a frame or album is to honor its emotional weight. A printed photograph demands to be handled—lifted from a box, smoothed at the corners, turned over in the palm of your hand. It bears evidence of use: a soft crease where it was once folded, a thumbprint dulled into the gloss, edges worn thin by years of being taken out and put away again.
The physical photograph takes the place of the person we long for. It has weight. It occupies space. It can be held, stacked, misplaced, rediscovered. In moments of longing, it becomes the closest thing we have to touch—a stand-in for a hand we can no longer reach for. That tangibility can never be replaced.
My mom has stepped up as the family photographer, one of the many ways she honors her mother. Now as a still grumpy, yet newly sentimental 21-year-old, I no longer whine when she asks for a selfie at Thanksgiving. When she gets them printed, we scan each image together. She has her own collection of photo albums, a collection that is beginning to rival my Nana’s.
For Christmas this year, I asked my parents for a digital camera. That way, my mom won’t be the only person carrying on her mother’s tradition. On my desk at home lies an empty leather photo album, just like Blanche’s, and an envelope full of 4×6 CVS prints, waiting to be tucked into plastic sleeves.
