Photomatter

Photomatter

Nowadays, most of our photographs are on our gadgets - cellphones, laptops, the works. We are at liberty to do what we like with them, the options being more than we had with our good old photos printed on hard paper which adorned our albums. Few years back I decided to do something more with my good old photos rather than seeing/showing them occasionally.

One day I sat with the numerous photos I had lying in various parts of my room as well as our house. They were there in drawers, in folders, in albums that were shoved in polybags and stored in some almirah of the house. I tried to think how often do I even sit and spend time looking at them and the response was may be once a year. So I decided to make a huge collage with some of them, get it mounted from the studio and place it above the television in my room where I can see it as often as I please.

The choice of photos did not pose too big a challenge because I decided to take for this collage one photo of each close relative of my family, quite like a family tree. Beginning with my grandparents, I came down to my aunts and uncles and then to my siblings and my cousins. Photos taken at weddings were quite helpful as I realised that I had just one each of some of the people I had chosen. Even though half of the people in that collage have left for their heavenly abode, they still live in my room fondly remembered and cherished. Instead of once a year I meet them several times a day.

Next, when one of my nieces was getting married, I decided to make a card for her using some of the photographs. I took a sheet of white chart paper and prepared a big card. On the outside page I wrote “To” and pasted photos of my aunt and uncle (that niece’s grandparents), my cousin and his wife (the parents) and of the niece and her brother. On the inside page, I wrote “From” and pasted photos of my immediate family. They loved the card. Specially because most of the photos had been taken at my daughter’s wedding and they were seeing them for the first time. After that I have made few other similar cards for different families for occasions like Xmas, engagement etc. In fact, the engagement card was more like “know your in-laws” one in which the relationship of the new entrant in the family with each person in the photographs was mentioned, like your would-be sis-in-law.........

These are some of the things I have been doing in my free time and I consider them as a huge bonus in the time frame called Life.