A Step Into History
I have inherited my great-grandparent’s photo-album filled with photographs of trips, friends, and family. Some years ago, I spent time trying to identify where some of their trips where taken. Many of the photographs were labeled with place names, and some were not. But most of them have been identified. Now, the people included in them are another matter.
I have scanned most of the photographs that I can easily place on the scanner. After uploading them to Shutterfly, I print them and place them into a photo album to take along on our vacation if we are happening to go to the same area. Then we can easily recreate them.
This has been a fun endeavor for all the family. Seeing the changes in the area and even what has remained the same is interesting to each of us. Standing in the places where my great-grandparents stood, is special to me. I wonder what the thought of the area, what did they discuss, what else did they have planned that day? Unfortunately, I do not have any journals or documentation of their travels, the whys and whens, except the small labels telling where on some of the photographs.
Traveling to the National Parks that they visited has been most special because the national parks were still very new back in the 1930s and 1940s when they visited. We have gotten to talk to many park rangers about the photographs in asking if they knew where in the park a particular photograph was taken. In Yellowstone, we met a ranger who had grown up in the park during that time and was one of the oldest park rangers still working there. He was able to tell us about some of the areas from personal experience. That was a treasure.
In the image above, we had been touring the American West and were traveling from Idaho to Colorado. We stopped for the night in Salt Lake City. With limited time the next morning, we rushed around the Temple Square looking for just the right spot. Thought she’s not standing in the same spot, we decided to have her stand next to the information TV, to show the changes in signage from when our ancestors visited. We do not know why they visited and decided to visit the temple, as they were Christian Science and not Mormon, but we have our story to tell in the recreation of their pictures.
We have collected many recreated photographs over the years in several different locations around the USA. There are still several more that need to be recreated. My hope is to one day create a scrapbook of our adventures in recreating these photographs.
Where have you recreated photographs from your ancestors or even your own life?
Who Were They? 