21 November, 2015. Houston
A couple of years ago I discovered a few websites that had literally thousands of images of my old home town, New Orleans. How fascinating it was to view these images, many of them taken from glass negatives made just after the Civil War!
These photographs were scanned at a very high resolution, and could be blown up to reveal astonishing details about my ancestral city. I could zoom in on a shop window of a particular street, and it was just like being there!!! I viewed hundreds of very old images, and had a ball doing so. Soon enough, being the ever-inquisitive type, I began to question some of the things I saw.
What I've noticed about old photos of New Orleans:
1. The streets were muddy and filthy. That was on a good day.
2. The city was virtually void of trees. What trees there were were scraggly.
3. There weren't many oak or other trees that are common there today, but the palm trees (Royal palms) were 3-4 stories tall! One doesn't see palm trees like that any more in New Orleans, because either diseases or periodic severe cold snaps - or both - have killed them.
4. I have seen many, many old photos and, no matter how much I zoom in, or how long I stare at them, I have never seen a single horse and rider. Lots of horse and buggies, and horse and wagons, and mules, too, but unlike Wild West TV programs, you never see a man or woman riding a horse. Why?
5. Whenever I see old (1860-1890) photos of the city's main drag, Canal Street, there are always several horsecars or mule cars (streetcars) without their animals. The horse trams seem to be just left there. Don't seem to see any horses or mules stabled or tied up anywhere. Why?
6. I've never seen an old photo taken while it's raining.
7. No matter how great a quality / clarity of the photo, I never see any cloud formations when the sky is visible. It just looks like a grey sheet spread overhead. Did they not have clouds back then, or was it always overcast or clear?
8. "Frameless heads on nameless walls, who look out on the world and can't forget" stare back with dull, lifeless eyes, as if their very spirit had departed. No matter how crystal clear, an old portrait always tells its viewer that the subject has passed away. It's something about the eyes, that betrays the absence of life. I noticed this as a small child. I could look at a group picture and point out which persons in a photograph had passed away and which ones had not.
Why is this so?
Looking at old photos is a genuine pleasure - it's like transporting back to another time in which one can see, but cannot be seen. There is an overall undercurrent of sadness associated with this activity, because by now, every last person in them, from the old-timer to the babe in arms, are now dead and buried, their very bones having crumbled to dust. This is the way things are. The images etched into the photograph are what remains of these human beings.
Some people vehemently refuse to have their picture taken - often out of fear that their soul or spirit will be captured and imprisoned for all eternity behind glass, frozen in time, doomed to stare back forever from an old leather frame, in mute silence, and be otherwise forgotten. When I view these images, I realize I am but a ghostly interloper, and what is there before my eyes is a mere shadow of a dead world. When I magnify the image to take a closer look, those long-deceased blur into the mists of time from whence they came - and they seem to say: "do not come nearer." So I back up, out of respect: If they are not my ancestors, they are somebody's.
I leave them to rest in peace.
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