Filed under: Miscellanea
I found these photos tucked behind the dust jacket of a book I got in a secondhand shop the other day. I’m really fond of them.
Written on the back: '29.6.53'
Aren’t they wonderful? Of course, now I’m making up all kinds of stories about the people in them based on the very vague information I can piece together from the pictures themselves. I’m pretty sure they’re not in Australia. The trees in the background of the first photograph and the style of the house in the second photograph make me think they’re perhaps Spanish or Latin American. I think the woman pictured on the verandah is one of the women is also in the other picture, but I’m not sure if it’s the same man. It might be. I keep searching the photos for clues and having vague fantasies that somehow someone will read this and recognise their grandmother or great-uncle and the mystery will be solved.
I love the notion that at the moment these pictures were taken, nobody had any idea that they’d end up wondered about by a stranger not yet born, on the other side of the world, using technology that might as well be a plot device in pulp science fiction. It makes me wonder what’s happened to things I’ve used, books I’ve read, notes I’ve jotted down and left on the bus. Maybe someone somewhere has wondered idly at their origin. Better still, maybe someday someone in the distant future will find something dusty that was once mine. If I’m long dead by then, I’ll be less dead for just a moment.
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Amy Tries Again 
