Looking Through My Grandmother’s Lens
How my grandmother’s favorite hobby helped me grieve her passing
About a year ago, I bought my first mirrorless camera. I’d taken a trip to Boston, and while my Google Pixel does have a great camera, I found myself longing for more control as I tried to capture architectural details, autumn leaves, random dogs, and other interesting-to-me minutiae.
I spent about a month researching my options and eventually settled on a Nikon Z fc. It was the only camera that came up on every list of “best affordable mirrorless cameras for travel” that I read. It was one of the cheaper options that also had consistently positive reviews from both amateur and more experienced photographers, and it didn’t hurt that the Z fc has a cool, retro look.
Camera in Hand
I blame Boston for my venture into photography, but there was another more personal reason I’ve jumped behind the lens. Her name was Ila, and she was my grandmother.
My grandmother loved taking pictures. She used to lug around her Polaroid 600 One Step Flash wherever we went; her camera bag was basically a second purse. She was always taking pictures at family birthday parties and holiday celebrations, on everyday outings we’d take together, and even at funerals. (Funeral photography is a strange, Southern tradition I’ve never understood, but it was fairly common among my grandmother’s generation.)
As a child, I found it annoying that she’d disrupt our fun. Couldn’t we just enjoy the moment? I remember feeling puzzled when she’d pull off the highway and spend five minutes taking pictures of clouds, or following scuttling Ghost crabs across a Panama City beach trying to capture their almost translucent bodies. But she was diligent.
Bundles of Photos
In her early 80s, a few months after my grandfather died, my grandmother moved to a suburb of Houston to reconnect with her high school sweetheart. (A story for another time, perhaps.) She’d lived her entire life in Albany, GA, with occasional travel to other places. But this was a big step for a woman with a double hip replacement who’d already surpassed the average lifespan of an American adult.
I was in grad school in Georgia then, and I didn’t have money or time to visit her. We would talk on the phone, but this was back in the early 2010s, before Facetime and Skype were part of our everyday lives. Once in a while, I’d receive a fat envelope wound in half a spool of clear tape, like a well-preserved mummy from Ancient Egypt.
But instead of a pharaoh, inside I’d find a stack of 4x6 photos developed from a disposable camera. Flowers, aisles in a grocery store, the off-center front of a restaurant, food, out-of-focus or blurred scenes from a moving car. Clouds. Always lots of clouds. On the back of each I’d find a description: “Bill’s new couch.” “The restaurant Hilda and me went to. Or is it Hilda and I?”
At the time, I felt flustered by the pictures. What was I supposed to do with images of people I didn’t know, their furniture, or the restaurants they sometimes ate at? The packets felt like clutter, especially given my grandmother’s lifelong struggle with hoarding and the burden it placed on us. Sometimes I’d look through them. Other times — and I admit this shamefully now — I’d toss them. Did they really warrant more than that?
What Makes Up a Life
After finishing my master’s degree, I decided to take a month-long trip around the U.K. I’d only been outside the South once, and never outside the U.S., and I was itching to be active after two years of sedentary study. I took my first digital camera on that trip, a silver point-and-shoot Sony Cybershot DSC-W80, and I photographed everything from famous landmarks to trashcans in parks.
This was back when you still had to pay by the hour for slow wifi, and before most people had smartphones, so I couldn’t just snap something and send it to my friends instantly. Whenever my hotel had affordable wifi, I’d upload my best shots to a Facebook album and label the places and things I’d seen.
I knew I was privileged to be taking this trip. Statistically speaking, it was unlikely most of my friends would be able to do this themselves and I wanted to share the experience. I remember telling them in a comment that “I feel like I’m taking this trip for all of us, and I want you all to get to share every minute of it.”
It came to me recently that this was what my grandmother was doing all along with her photography. When she couldn’t be with the people she loved, she preserved moments to share with them. She was inviting us into the small moments that, taken in total, make up a life.
A Love Letter in Her Own Language
My grandmother was hugely invested in my U.K. trip, which is why I began printing the pictures from my Facebook album in small batches at Walgreens and arranging them into a physical album for her. I took a lot of time with it, writing in the names of each place and something interesting about it: Tower of London — houses Henry VIII’s armor. Edinburgh Castle — Scotland’s crown jewels are kept here. Cardiff — the castle here has a wall decorated with all kinds of animals! I gave it to her one Christmas when I visited her in Texas.
That album became one of her favorite things. Years later when she moved into assisted living, she’d eagerly show it to nurses and tell them all about the things she’d learned reading my notes. At the time, I thought she was just proud of me. Looking back, I realize it meant so much because I’d written her a love letter in her own language.
Hand-me-down Hobbies
My grandmother needed extensive care for the last few years of life, which increased dramatically in the final months. So while we grieved her passing we also felt bewildered by the suddenly-empty blocks of time we’d devoted to caregiving.
I turned that time to the pollinator garden my sister and I had built the year before. It had started as a small way to help the environment and maybe increase the curb appeal of our new house; it became a way to feel connected to my grandmother, who had been a passionate gardener.
I worked until my carpal tunnel flared and I developed trigger finger, and I pushed through that until my rheumatoid arthritis flared, too. And then I sat with the emptiness in Buddhist fashion.
Time passed. My sister and I took our trip to Boston. Again, I curated an album for family and friends. It was during that process that I recognized my grandmother’s influence in what I’d photographed: gray, autumn clouds; interesting signs; subway graffiti — anything that seemed to reveal the city’s character.
A Gift to Myself
Returning home with a phone camera full of new love letters, I was reminded that the world is full of beauty and curiosities. Not everyone is lucky enough to explore it, and none of us ever get to see all of it. We’re here for our allotted time and portion of experience — and that’s it. Thankfully, experiences, like love, are never halved by sharing.
So I bought a camera and enrolled in a photography class. It was sort of a gift to myself: a way to fill time, a new way to experience the world around me, a new chapter to open after one closed.
I’m not aiming to be a great photographer; I’m merely continuing my grandmother’s work while I’m still walking this wonderous earth.
