My grandmother once told a story I regard as a parable—maybe a parable of feminism or, at the very least, a parable of memory.
My grandmother grew up in the small town of Goffstown, NH. It’s roughly an hour outside Boston where her father grew up. Thanks to proximity and family influence, my grandmother enjoyed a classic New England accent. If you want a good idear how she talked, listen to the M*A*S*H character, Major Charles Emerson Winchester III. Her accent remained intact even after she eloped at 18 and crossed the border into Canada.
It would be impossible to describe my grandmother as a feminist. Too young for the suffrage movement, too old for the second wavers, she fell into the role of docile minister’s wife. On a Sunday morning, she made sure my grandfather’s clerical collar was on straight. Whenever my grandfather left the house, my grandmother made sure his left shoe was on his left foot and his right shoe was on his right foot. Yes, my grandfather was that absent-minded. Nevertheless, my grandmother had a mind of her own and she was never reluctant to let you know it. Hence the parable.
A younger man from Goffstown set out to write a local history. As part of his research, he contacted older people who used to live there. He wanted to walk them through the town, listen to their reminiscences, and note the changes they observed. He contacted my great uncle, Quentin, one of my grandmother’s younger brothers. My grandmother volunteered to do the walk but, no, the local historian had already made arrangements with Quentin and that was good enough for him. As my grandmother told the story, she rolled her eyes. Don’t know what kind of memories he hopes to wring out of Quentin; the man has Alzheimer’s, for goodness sake. Then she spoke the unspeakable: it’s because I’m a woman. I’m older than Quentin, so my memory goes back further. And my memory is sharper. But, no, he won’t listen to me. I’m just a silly woman.
I take my grandmother’s story as a parable of photographic practice. It prompts me to ask of the photographer: in what ways does your practice encourage forgetfulness? We look closely at those subjects we choose to remember. But we nurture biases that condemn another hundred subjects to be forgotten.
