#TBT - Turning Back Time by David Anthony Williams

Intro by Skip Cohen

I've often referred to Facebook and social media as the mortar that holds the bricks together. I'm referring to those "bricks" of friendships with people we care about, but simply don't get to see often enough. No matter how bizarre the world is, social media helps us stay in touch with those special people.

While I had a 1979 throwback ready to go this morning, when I read David Anthony Williams' post. It was too good not to share. It's so well written and deserves to travel well beyond his FB page. My Polaroid shot from '79 will have to wait!

David closed with, "​I was somewhat comforted by thinking we don't really say 'Goodbye' forever, provided we live on in photographs and people's thoughts."

Please take the time to read his post below...then, take a few more minutes and think about that one person in your life who inspired you to be who you are today! Treat yourself to a few minutes and take a walk down Memory Lane.

Happy Throwback Thursday!

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by David Anthony Williams
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Well, that was harder than I thought...My sister was clearing out her attic/office of things related to family that she needed my input into. This concerned five 13x16 inch prints on 16x20 board of my dad - a Kodak Professional Markets exec - shot in Rochester in 1959 - on the brand-spanking new color negative film that he would later launch to the IAP in 1960.

They'd faded, the black & white had silvered on the edges. I was able to tag onto the end of a artwork shoot Ian van der Wolde was set up for (thanks mate a thousand times) who made files I could cover a stadium with.

I had presented many times on the heart-felt value of printed images and it really hit home as I cut up the originals for disposal. '....mounts are full of lingin', '..they're faded', 'there's multiple prints of the same image'....even the smell of them: storage, paper, faint whiff of chemical was tugging at me.

​All true. Still hard. I had to cut them face down.

One of the images had been in our family living room all of my life. Handling the prints bought back an almost electric connection that was highly emotional. I was saying 'Goodbye' all over again.

Coming back from shopping today, I happened past the street where dad spent his last couple of years - in a beautiful facility like a country club - full of kind and caring people. It is a building site. A massive excavation where the building used to be. Change is inevitable.

We carry 'them' with us in our heads. When we conjur the memories up - or they come unbidded - they come in the form of little 'film clips' like rackety 8mm lengths of film....prints with white borders carrying a date in someone's hands.

As we age and are less distracted by 'worklife' these memories and connections - I think - increase and behind it is the pain of loss that becomes a little less sharp year by year.

I was very pleased to know that the WW2 photographic of my dad's is in the Australian War Memorial, and much of the rest of his collection is in the Kodak collection in the museum in Victoria.

I was somewhat comforted by thinking we don't really say 'Goodbye' forever providing we live on in photographs and people's thoughts.

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