One of the most interesting things to learn about other photographers is how their love of photography began. Visit Dane Sanders and he talks about how important the one picture he has of his dad is. Or Jasmine Star talks about how her own wedding photographer inspired her to quit law school and pursue photography instead.
If you’ve visited my website or talked with me about photography at all, you’ve heard about how my love of photography started young…when I photographed my fellow classmates in middle school.
Most of you might not know, though, that the love of photography runs in my family. My grandpa on my Dad’s side took pictures most of his life. He died last year, right before Christmas, just before his 98th birthday, so that was a LOT of pictures. He and my grandma also inherited a lot of pictures from my Aunt Kathy Bohl. Her pictures are amazing. She traveled to parts of Asia and captured some beautiful images of everyday life there. I always enjoy looking through her work.
Below is one of my favorite pictures that my Aunt Kathy took. I don’t really know why I love it so much. Perhaps it’s the colors, perhaps it’s the lines, or perhaps it’s a memory of a relative that I lost way too soon.
My aunt died when I was just a kid - too young to really understand all the difficulties in her life or what had made her so sick. I just knew her as a fun, joyous person. And now that I’m older and I can look back at her pictures, I can see that photography is one of the things that truly gave her a purpose in life. And I think I’ve inherited that from her.
I have one very distinct memory of being with my aunt. Ignore the tear-stained blog post; this story always makes me tear up.
We were at my grandparents house, getting ready to go for a walk. My aunt was letting me borrow one of her Walkmans, which I thought was possibly the coolest thing ever. She said, “Wait here, I have to make a phone call.” So I waited as she used the one phone in the house…in the kitchen. Just a minute or so later, we headed off on our walk, our Walkmans tuned to the same radio station. We had made it pretty far down the block when the DJ suddenly came on air with a request. “This one’s from our friend Kathy to her niece Sarah, whom she loves very much.” As the notes and words of the song “Pretty Woman” hit my ears, I looked up at my aunt.
“That’s us,” she whispered. “That song is about us.”
And there we were, two “pretty women” just walking down the street. Two women whose love of photography would connect them long after one of them had gone.
(Now I know that the song “Pretty Woman” has some not-so-family-friendly insinuations, especially when you think of it in conjunction with the Garry Marshall film of the same name, but I know that my aunt meant it as a compliment, and with the purest intentions.) :o) I still get a little teary-eyed whenever I hear that song.
So if you get nothing else from this story, know that I understand how important images can be: images of a loved one long gone, or even images that were taken by someone you admire. Pictures from days you want to remember and memories you want to hang on to.
Yet another reason that I love what I do.
~Sarah
by SarahBohl
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