certain of something

These pictures from the mid-60's are always so fabulous. The colors are saccharine, the patterns grotesque, the poses classic, and the facial expressions always seem so certain of something. These pictures, taken at the advent of affordable and accessible domestic color photography, show the insides of homes in a new way. It's hard for me to relate to the background interiors in older black and white photographs because color is a major reference point for me when I think about my own home. I once looked at an amazing coffee table book which had published restored photographs taken with really early color film before color photographic printing paper had been manufactured. It was so strange to see photographs of people from the 20's and 30's in vibrant color because most of the photographs I know from that era are black and white. It seems appropriate to me that the photographs I find relatable are those from the era after my grandparent couplings met and started their respective families-- it was the advent of each couples marriage that also begins the main photographic paper trail of our family's existence. Again and again I find that my grandparents somehow become the referent of most things that I am making. They are the oldest kin I've known, the parents of my parents, they walked me into my twenties, I witnessed them wisen and gray.