The privilege of a picture

We were at a big family party with my in-laws last night. Will was a hit in her first shalwar kameez and I was playing with my new digital camera, trying to get some good shots with her grandparents and cousins.

I was disappointed when the memory card was suddenly full. My husband's cousins were appalled that the one we were using was so small, didn't we know we could get a 4 gig card for twenty bucks?

I eagerly uploaded the images when we got home, added them to the store of well over a thousand images from Will's first 18 months alone.

This morning I finally got around to starting Kiran Desai's novel "The Inheritance of Loss" and was struck by the following:

They were poor people photographs, of those unable to risk wasting a picture, for while all over the world people were now posing with an abandon never experienced by the human race before, here they were standing X-ray stiff.

There is a photograph of my dad's parents in Holland on their wedding day. Black and white, beautiful but very formal. I wish I had it to juxtapose with these.



And finally: