19 January 2012

Winter cravings

On snowy days like these I get cravings.
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I wish I knew more about photography - not only as an art form, but as a craft as well.
I grew up in a busy household of a self-taught photographer.
She had her heavy photo apparatus Zenit and boxes of the only film you could choose - Svema (how does it go “in Soviet Russia the film chooses you?”). She also had her very own little photo lab in the bathroom, an infra-red light bulb in the kitchen, and little buckets with mysterious chemicals where images magically appeared on the pieces of paper. She even had cute clothes lines where newly born pictures were nurtured.
My mom did it all by herself back in the 80s, when I was little.
I felt like a sorcerer’s scholar and held my breath witnessing how those moments of the past had been coming back.
Have you ever wondered why the hell we never really learn much from our parents? I mean, learn something valuable, take over crafts like in olden days: from father to son, from generation to generation. I’m not even talking about grandparents and the whole universe that will pass with them. With our pursuit of staying relevant it never really hits us until we are parents ourselves.
This is painfully ironic that I’ve received every hug, every kiss and lullaby in the world, yet I was deprived of this simple thing: a good old chat with my mom when she was 23 and I was just born.
Mom doesn’t have a photo lab at home anymore, nor does she indulge herself in photography as much as she should. Now she likes my photos as any mom would like her child’s arts & crafts experiments.
I will learn more though; crafts are a long term project, and they are fun.

13 comments:

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Nikky said...

Aw, what a sweet post. I think sometimes those things skip a generation. I learned all about making pies and canning from my grandma, and I think that if it had been my mum who tried to teach me I wouldn't have been as interested. There was also an element where these weren't seen as valuable skills for people of my parents' generation, and then people my age started to see what they were missing. Like, if my mum had been baking it just would have been normal and uninteresting, but because it was my grandma, who I didn't see as often, it had a kind of mystique which really made me want to do it.