Who Asked Me?

I was talking to my dad the other day, and he was raving about a new video camera that my brother bought – a high definition, direct to hard drive model which apparently produces amazing images. The future of image-capturing devices appears limitless, and their capacity to store large amounts of digital information in the smallest of spaces increases exponentially each year. It’s getting to the point where there’s little need to apply any kind of selectivity to video recording; one can simply leave the camera on at all times, and is limited only by his patience to edit the material later.

I borrowed (or stole) this photo from my parents house the last time I was in California, and brought it back to New York where I scanned it. From left to right are my grandmother, grandfather, famed North Beach legend and fan of any free meal Armando Navarro, and my dad. (An ex employee, Liz, sits between my grandparents, partially blocked by my grandmother.) The setting is the dining room at my grandparents’ San Francisco home on Leavenworth Street, and the time is the early 70s. I’m not sure why I chose this photograph over hundreds of others to take back with me to New York, but something about it captures my imagination. I look at it and wonder what the conversation was, and what happened just before and just after the shutter opened then closed. As primitive as the technology will soon seem, there’s also an element that will disappear when film is gone, and it will likely never be replaced.