This pandemic reinforces the idea that when one is of a certain age (my Rosemary and I are in the category) one is waiting for inevitabilities. Death is the final one but is preceded by diseases perhaps not yet known.

But since I lived in Mexico for many years I see that feature with a certain degree of cheerfulness.

The problem is dealing with the detritus of acquired stuff. How valuable or even important will it all be when I am gone?

About 15 years ago I would mockingly comment to people that the concept of banging in a nail on a wall and hanging a painting or a photograph was a custom that was receding into the past. I would tell them that art galleries would eventually go bankrupt because nobody would want to buy art work to hang on a wall.

Hilary

That all important mantle in the living room has been taken over by a very large flat screen, smart TV. Because some of us of that certain age might live in close quarters those walls may be occupied by large mirrors that make the rooms seem larger.

Recently I wrote this blog of having a photograph of my paternal grandmother framed and how my framer at Magnum Frames carefully positiond on the back of the frame the note my grandmother wrote to her friend (and our fake uncle) Leo Mahdjubian.

Our bedroom is full of framed family photographs. They are not the usual ones. They are examples of what I have come to believe I do best and that is to shoot portraits.

These two, our daughters Ale and Hilary taken in the late 70s with their Mexican tops I printed in my Burnaby basement darkroom. One of the tricks of the day was to sandwich with the negative a negative that had a screen. You can see what it looks like.

The tragedy is that somehow when me moved from our Kerrisdale house to the one here in Kitsilano, those screens were lost. With a scanner I could have done the same thing with pictures of our granddaughters.

What is self-evident to me is that any photograph that is framed is a photograph saved. But I wonder after we are gone, if anybody will find any use, value or charm in all the photographs that decorate our Kits home.