She Prefers to be called Grandma
This was originally published in my Prime Lenses Newsletter. You can sign-up for a weekly update to your inbox here.
“I can’t get through to your Gran”
When you live a 14-hour drive from an elderly relative, crisis co-ordination is key. Siblings, neighbours and community responders dotted around the country took full advantage of 21st century infrastructure to help my Grandmother, who’d fallen coming back into her house at least three hours earlier. If we’d not been able to, she probably wouldn’t have lived to have successful surgery a couple of days later.
A relative in hospital over a weekend guarantees two things. Worrying and waiting. While waiting, we tidied up, and I looked through some of the many photo albums in the house, as well as a ring binder containing a write-up of a road trip to France that they’d taken in 1992.
Photography, which I often talk about coming to me from my Dad, was also a big part of my Grandparents’ life. Granddad tinkered with the medium, generally shooting Polaroids to commemorate a birthday bouquet or the completion of a particularly elaborate jigsaw, but it was Grandma who took it upon herself to document family life. There are stacks of prints from various cameras dotted around the room I used to stay in as a kid. I’ve found cameras too: 110, 35mm, evenAPS, which she used to make some fabulous panoramas on trips to places like Stockholm, Copenhagen, even St Petersburg. I’ll need to scan some for preservation, but these were places I didn’t even know she’d been, and I’m so thankful to have the opportunity to ask her about them.
The first camera I stumbled upon was a Fuji, the same as the first one I had and have mentioned on the show. A 21st birthday present from my parents that Grandma had taken a shine to as she was visiting us that weekend. This 1.5 megapixel marvel used SmartMedia cards to store images, and I found a small collection of them, which I assume are full of images. Having grown up with film cameras and without a computer in the house in the early 2000s, Grandma seemingly used these cards like permanent storage as she didn’t have anywhere to offload images to. Interestingly, my late father used to do the same thing with his compact flash cards. I’ll need to get hold of a card reader that can transfer from this long-dead format and see what she captured in her late sixties.
Next, I found a barely used Canon Ixus 80. This camera is in incredible condition, sporting a very fetching deep red colour and, more remarkably, turned on when I pressed the power button despite the most recent images being dated 2021. Impossibly small, it boasts a fine 8 megapixel CCD sensor, zoom lens, flash, and SD card storage. This camera will probably provide some entertainment for the kids and me on a walk and will definitely give up its images more easily than the Fuji. At the very least, I’ll be able to geek out with Ali.
Through discovering all these little photo projects and cameras, I realised that in sending her many postcards and family pictures over the years, I wasn’t acting independently but rather carrying on a tradition she’d started. That’s probably why it has always felt like the right thing to do to send her little bits and bobs in the post. There may not be as many adventures ahead as are behind, but I must try to reminisce with her to better understand her story. This week was a reminder to never wait to learn more about someone you love.