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Who We Were: A Snapshot History Of America By Michael Williams, Richard Cahan, and Nicholas Osborn |
The Eternal Sunshine of Fred & Anne
About a month ago, I came across a stack of three photo albums at a flea market in Wisconsin. I looked at the first page of the first album--
--and I knew I was probably going to want all three. I asked the dealer how much for all of them, got a very fair price and put them in my bag and moved on. It wasn't until I got home later that day that I was able to take a closer look. The first album was put together by a young man named Fred from Spirit Lake, Iowa and chronicles his late high school and college days from about 1915 through 1919.
While the subject matter was pretty typical the album was very artfully put together (you can see some more photos from this album here). As I looked through the album, however, I began to notice something strange.
A great number of photos had either had faces cut or scratched out or had been removed altogether and all those photos appeared to be of women. Not all the women in the album had been removed but in each case where there was a name attached to a removed photo it was a woman's name. Now I have lots of photos where faces have been cut out to be used in lockets or in album pages like the one at the top of this page but these were far too crudely removed to be of any artistic use. Clearly, someone went through the album and systematically, and sometimes apparently violently, removed photos of women.
The second album belonged to a girl named Anne- it also dated from the same period- from around 1914 through 1920. Again, the subject matter was pretty typical, a mix of school and family life, nicely, if not quite as artistically as Fred's, put together.
But, like Fred's album, something strange was going on. Once again, figures were being cut out of photographs, though in this case- with the exception of this first photo-
-the figures being cut out of the photos all appeared to be male. And, in fact, all the photos that were removed appear to be of the same man- one "Cas from Canada"- though it's impossible to be sure.
Towards the end of Anne's album Fred makes an appearance- clearly the two had begun dating.
At the very end of the album "Cas" makes one last appearance- this time not only is the photo cut and gouged
but another photo has been placed over it as well!
The third and final album contains only one photo that has been defaced- this relatively innocuous one.
The bulk of the album documents Fred and Anne's budding relationship and looks as if they both worked on the album together.
Indeed, the two eventually marry.
And, it seems, live happily ever after.
So the story ends happily (though I couldn't find them listed as a couple in a quick search of the 1930 census). Still, what are we to make of the removed photos- did they agree to go through their own or each other's albums and remove any photos of old flames? Did one or the other do it on their own? If so, did they do it laughingly after a few glasses of wine or bitterly after an argument? And did it acheive it's desired effect- did Fred never again think about Delia or Gladys, did Anne forget Cas? These albums remind us of how potent our relationship to photographs can be, how fully they embody and encapsulate our past. Who hasn't felt the perverse (or perhaps not so perverse) thrill of ripping up or throwing away a photo of an old lover. What's amazing about these albums is that they no longer contain a record of a former love but of the moment that love became something else, something they no longer felt they could live with.
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