My father always lined us up by the car on holidays to photograph us; my brother looking bored, me smirking, and my mother just trying to make the best of it. I have dozens of these photographs. My brother and I always complained about having to pose for them, but whenever my father took us up on our advice for candid pictures there I was caught with my mouth wide open, my eyes closed or looking oddly furtive.
What photographs do you have on your desk right now? Or on the wall or on your dresser or in albums or on your computer? What do they say about you and the people you love?
Writers are crazy about photographs, both in fiction and in memoir. They can lend a kind of shorthand to events. Anne Tyler in her 1980 novel Morgan’s Passing writes of a family photograph album with 15 pages devoted to the babyhood of the first of seven daughters…(to continue reading, click on the title above)
