jml297

It was hard to fathom the rate of change. It had snuck up on him over the years, then the decades seemed to flit by with unseemly haste. But a constant, across the hours that made up the days, weeks, and months of his life, was an urge to capture some of those moments before they disappeared.

Frank wasn’t a particularly gifted photographer. He was firmly in the amateur camp. Taking photos had been something of a novelty in his early years, and it was an occasion of note when the family was gathered to have a photograph taken. There would be an unusual level of fuss in the preparation for the photograph with Sunday clothes to be worn, and his mother would carefully check their faces and hands to ensure standards of cleanliness were on display. Then there was the positioning of himself and his brothers, usually in descending order of age and height, with his very tall father at one end, and his rather short mother at the other. It made him think of a neatly ordered bookshelf, the way they were arranged.

After the photographs were taken, there was the interminable wait for them to be printed and delivered. Several of the precious copies were despatched to family overseas. These were people he knew about, as they were sometimes discussed and sent letters and cards at Christmas, but like the Royal Family, their existence was real yet nebulous.

When he moved to Sydney searching for work, the Depression was still casting a shadow over the sprawling city. Frank shared lodgings in a boarding house in the inner city with a mate, and was drawn with a growing fascination to the harbour. The bridge was under construction, and though money was tight, he bought a second-hand camera. With care, he took photos as the glorious arch inched closer to completion. This engineering feat seemed to capture an ambition and optimism that went beyond joining two sides of a city.

Marriage and family life followed, and the camera captured some special moments with his wife and sons. It became a ritual when the extended family came together for Easter and Christmas to have group photos taken. This provided a wonderful collection of smiling faces captured in colour, with photos now much quicker and cheaper to process. From the sepia toned photographs, smaller than a standard playing card, that had been his first forays into photography, these were bright, glossy and big enough to see without squinting.

Towards the end of his long life, Frank’s love of walking never waned. On these trips, he’d take an old film camera. Even though his eyesight was no longer sharp, he’d take photos of the views that he remembered admiring years before. His old camera would click, and he’d roll the film forward, ready for the next moment that would capture his attention.

This piece was written to a prompt on the Writer’s Digest website. The Piano Bench: select an item from this list and write a story based on it. 1. A piano bench. 2. A cast iron pan. 3. A tattoo. 4. A film camera. 5. A book case.

Photo: old cameras at the Kandos Museum