Composition - Photo

My mother never had such a photo. All else is real. The photo is a fiction cobbled together from other pieces of reality and my adult admission, or acceptance perhaps, of what I have really felt about my circumstances as a son and a child.

My mother had photos of herself around the cottage taken by one of her lovers. There was nothing outrageous or inappropriate about them. They were very nice candid portraits of a kind of simple intimacy. She still has the best one hanging in a hallway at the Sonoma house. Seeing it again a few years ago, I was surprised at how well the colors and contrast of the print had survived. We’re all used to seeing commercially processed photographs from the 1970s, Fotomat specials. Like memories of the decade itself, the colors fade drastically as the crystallized chemicals age and become bleached by light, air and moisture. I had started to believe the photos and the wash and rinse of the past done in media and movies, the boiled reductions of tribute bands, situation comedies and “greatest hits”, were really how it was in general. Well, I sort of believed it. I know that we lose things. The real feel of the era, the depths of emotions, the intensity of the politics, the characteristics of a time that have no analog in the go, go digital world of today, are forgotten. All I could say was that it wasn’t quite like our current disco-craze, sexually swinging version of the decade that has become the record. The pace of that world was different. The feel of the moments of life had a texture produced in that moment by the quality of sunlight, the character of the people you were with, the thoughts of the day; very little of it, if any, was manufactured by free trade agreements, fitting the demographics of your cohort.

The photo of my mother struck me when I saw it again. The man who took it, Tom, whom I met later, was a very good amateur photographer. He printed his work himself in his own darkroom using professional grade materials. The colors were still rich and deep. The darks have remained a solid blue black, the lights burn off the image in fire white. It was a vivid reminder of a quality of time and of being I had not felt in many years, and which I had nearly forgotten.

In the photograph my mother is probably in her early or mid-twenties. The point-of-view is from somewhere around her thighs or knees looking into her face. She is reclining in a bed or on a couch, dressed in jeans with a simple brass buckle belt and a red cotton strappy top. There is a window with small potted plants on its sill just behind and to the left of her head. The light from it is bright white in the print with the plants almost absorbed as gray and yellow shadows. My mother is looking directly at the camera, neither smiling nor sad. She looks thoughtful, like she might say something. Her wild brown and blonde hair frames a face that is barely familiar as hers. She is beautiful, young, and like a Pre-Raphaelite’s vision of a Northern Italian maiden. Her eyes are searching. The reds and browns are warm and alive. Her skin is smooth, tanned and without blemish. You would not think of her as a mother. You would think she was someone’s young muse.

In my creative imagination I have taken this photo and melded it with one of a young mother at a commune I once saw in a book about America. They looked poor, dirty, naked and tanned, but they were together. I took my mother and I gave her this scene of pathos, this photographic baby. I gave her myself, unsure that I was ever wanted. I tried to imagine the birth and construction of a bond we had never developed. I give the photograph as evidence. Only now, some twenty-five years later, can I admit the loss. Maybe the invention of this photograph is a pathetic contrivance, once you know. It seemed the best way to capture what was felt.