The Third - No. 021
A Barbie birthday, Junior and Senior, and PortuGALs take Paris.
My scanner has been working in overdrive for the past few days. All day it whirls and screeches like the robot it is. As of writing this newsletter, I have 31 rolls of film to finish scanning and one roll on the way from the lab. Most of these are from a large pile of negatives I brought back to Madrid from Pittsburgh. Various family photos that cover important events and a wide range of time. I recently scanned baby photos of myself from when my family still lived in Lawrenceville. There are photos of my childhood home being moved in. It’s very jarring to see a lot of these as I am confronted with realities I clearly lived, but have no memory of. Some events in the photos I can vaguely piece together. Others I have to think if I remember them genuinely or if it’s a memory reinforced from exposure to the exposure. I was staring at myself today smiling at the camera with another boy that I was clearly very good friends with. I have no idea who he is.
The way the scanning program works is a fairly standard procedure. It starts with a preview scan. I then need to zoom in on individual shots to make corrections before finally scanning the bunch. This leads to a sometimes comical sequence of events that starts with me guessing what the negatives are by looking at them as I clean them. Then things come into focus as I see the previews appear. But the zoom is really where things shock me. (One time I zoomed in on my great-grandmother just in her casket. It was so funny purely from the unexpectedness.) I was in the process of scanning a roll that was at first just a bunch of blurry photos of a plant. There wasn’t a timestamp. I was confused. As I made my way through the shots, I realised this was a science fair project where I played music for a plant to see how it would affect its growth. I then enlarged a photo of myself from middle school. Smiling in American Eagle hand-me-downs from the late aughts. And I couldn’t recognise the kid I was staring at.
I was stunned. I’ve grown accustomed to seeing myself as a toddler or in primary school. Thanks to digital cameras, I’ll always have quick access to what I looked like in high school and university. But this middle school aged boy? I had completely forgotten him and those three years. He feels stuck in a weird place in time that marked the transition from film cameras to point and shoots. Maybe there’s more to discover in the other 31 rolls sitting in my living room. Maybe there’s more to discover in the myriad of boxes and drawers littered with photos and negatives in my parents’ home. Or maybe this is all I have of this tween going through a shitty time.
I’m sure you’re wondering where the hell are these photos and why the hell aren’t they in this newsletter. For complicated reasons, they are scanned but not on this computer and blah blah blah. I’ll be sure to post them in the next newsletter. Pinky promise. I’ve been putting these photos along with a mix of my own photography on this Instagram account. Give it a quick little follow if you’re intrigued! Today, I thought I’d share three of my favourite photos that I’ve posted recently with a little blurb.
Yes, these are the two men who also share my name. They’re part of the reason I am the third and this is The Third. This was taken in 2015. My father and I had to drive down to DC so that I could apply for my visa to head to France. My grandfather hadn’t been before and we figured it would be a good idea to bring him along for the one-night trip. I spent most of the time languishing after an ex who lived in the area.
The PortuGALs took Lisboa by storm in 2019. We decided to repeat that experience in 2020 but à Paris. There were some additions to the PortuGALs, and some PortuGALs didn’t make it (on the plane). Some key principles of being a PortuGAL? Meticulously prepping your gear for the trip, always being ready to take a gear pic, and doing anything to get the shot. Oh, and sunnies.
I can’t remember how old I was on this birthday. But I’ll never forget that Barbie. Lifeguard Barbie was everything to me. She was only outdone by a mermaid Barbie that had hair which changed colours in the water. There’s something about the unbridled joy on my face as I open the gift. And also only holding onto the Barbie box and not giving Ken the time of day. I’m sure not everyone was thrilled to be giving me dolls for my birthday. But everyone made the right decision in the end!
