Written by Darriel McBride for Family Pictures USA Despite the fact that we may love our families, there are things each of us carry in our hearts that may be difficult to share with our loved ones. For LGBT+ folks, opening up to family about their sexuality can be the most difficult thing to share. […]
A Boston-Edison Tale
65 Years, 4 Generations, 1 Home By Michelle May Historic Boston-Edison is a 36-block neighborhood area of Detroit containing approximately 900 houses. The District is bordered by Boston Boulevard on the North, Edison Avenue on the South, Woodward Avenue on the east and Linwood on the West. It is one of the largest residential historic districts […]
I Didn’t know my Great Aunt was Queer
Viktor holds a photo of his family. During his time as a visiting professor at Dartmouth College – back in 2016 – Thomas had the opportunity to meet artist Viktor Witkowski and professor Katie Hornstein over dinner. Both brought family photos to share that night for an impromptu photo share session. Katie had a print […]
A CHERISHED BOND BETWEEN SIBLINGS
Written by Darriel McBride for Family Pictures USA For many members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community, National Coming Out Day is the perfect time to celebrate their own stories while raising awareness about the LGBTQ+ experience. Proclaiming one’s identity is a deeply personal and often challenging experience for LGBTQ+ individuals. Regardless […]
Chief of the Red Caps: James H. Williams and The Making Of A Harlem Community Hero
By Eric K. Washington James H. Williams, Otto Sarony Studio, ca. 1905. Courtesy Charles Ford Williams Family Archives “At the Grand Central station is a colored man who probably knows more people than any other Negro in New York,” a front page lede in the New York Age read in 1923. “He is Chief James H. Williams, head of the […]
Family Memories in Your Home Movies
There truly is nothing like reliving memories from the past and old home movies is one of the best ways to do that. They contain priceless footage of moments in our lives, laughs of lost loved ones, and family history worth preserving for future generations. No matter how long it has been, rewinding a tape […]
Scanning Tips and Tricks
In this day and age with the advancements in technology, there’s no good excuse for poor image quality. With smartphones and digital cameras, low resolution is a thing of the past. So, it’s always a shame when a project with scanned images is blurry or pixelated. But rest assured, I will show you the ropes […]
Family photos can fight the climate crisis
By John D. Sutter There’s a simple problem at the heart of the climate crisis: We don’t live long enough to really feel it. Academics call this “generational amnesia” or “shifting baseline syndrome.” The Earth operates on a timeframe of centuries and millennia. We humans are here for just a few decades. That makes it […]
Photo Day Series
By Evan Trine I’ve been working on this body of work for the last year or so. It developed slowly after stripping down previous bodies of work until I realized that the source imagery I’d been using was actually the most interesting, valuable part of my process. I haven’t completely landed on the language around […]
Saving Childhood Memories
Glitter, glitz, and not so glam…it’s all fun and games until your children bring home their treasures and masterpieces and your house transforms from a clean, comfortable sanctuary into an overwhelming, messy studio art gallery. Of course, their works of art are precious and priceless. Their hand-prints and drawings with “You are the best Mommy […]
Rising Scholars of Immokalee
Zulaika Quintero, Jose Quintero and Elva Quintero We had the opportunity to meet Zulaika Quintero through our photo-share in Southwest Florida. As the principal of a local public charter school, she has tailored the school’s curriculum to meet the needs of the children in her community. “Everything is taught in both languages and that enables […]
Saving and Protecting Your Family Pictures
Thomas recently connected with Rodney Freeman, creator of the platform Black Male Archives via Linked In. Intrigued by his work, we invited Rodney to share more some of his personal family archives and tell us about his history with photo preservation. I’m a librarian with a passion for saving/preserving pictures. I’ve been a librarian for […]
Tips on Dating Old Photos
Sometimes, sorting through old, unlabeled photographs and trying to determine the names, dates, people, and places in them is like attempting to solve a mystery. Old family photographs are a treasured part of any family history but understanding them and the stories they tell can often require an extensive knowledge of your family history and […]
L’dor Va’dor, From Generation to Generation
That curly hair. Where did it come from? Our oldest son, Max, started showing signs of curly hair as an infant. My wife Sarah has straight hair, and I have medium-ish wavy hair. But my father, well that dude had some serious curls back in the day. So we started looking for old photos of […]
Unlocking Memories From Old Photos
Milestones of Our Lives As the proverb says, “life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but the moments that take our breath away.” These moments that take our breath away are often milestones and significant memories that together make up the timeline of our lives. By creating a family timeline, you’ll […]
From One, Many
If we look closely, we can see traces of our ancestors in our faces, our personalities, our genes. Our relatives, the people in their lives, and their circumstances became embedded in their bodies, shaping the way they moved and thought and lived. They then passed some of those things on to us, just as their […]
MY AUNT EMMA KNEW DUKE ELLINGTON
By Michon Boston Michon (C), her sister, Taquiena (L) and her mother, Caroline (R) With each family death another door closes, another photo album disappears. It becomes a detective job without the actual witnesses to piece together the lives they lived. I can only remember the faces from some family albums during visits especially unexpected […]
Remembering Your Love Story Through Photos
What’s Your Love Story? As Nicholas Sparks, author of The Notebook, once wrote: “Behind every great love, there’s a great love story.” And behind every great love story, there are bound to be photographs that tell it. But it’s not just about the photos, it’s about the moments they capture and the sentiment they hold […]
From Farm to Table
The Life of a 107-year-old Detroit Home (r to l) Annette Baka, Maryanne Porzondek (mother), and Nancy Taylor (sister). I wanted to be involved in Family Pictures USA in order to show how a 107-year-old home survived, transformed, and brought two families together that will be bonded forever. The house at 5528 Moran Street has survived […]
The Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation
MATRIARCHAL CULTURE The Occaneechi Band is a small Indian community located in North Carolina. It is one of the only First Nation’s in the state to reclaim their ancestral home. It’s just a beautiful thing when you see all the colors and the people dancing and having a good time. You can just feel the […]
