Through My Grandfather's Lens

In sixth grade, I won second place in a school-wide photography contest for our local newspaper. The photo was a blurred close-up of a dewy, blue chicory flower in a hotel parking lot. I showed my grandfather my work, as photography had always been the one bond besides blood that we truly shared. He told me he loved it and I knew he meant it. To this day, the photo remains framed in my grandparent’s dining room.

by Emma Childs

He died this past spring. We had been expecting it, as he was old and had a particularly nasty disease that left him with lungs that worked too hard to find oxygen that wasn’t there. He relied on a tank to breathe and for the last year of his life, his days mainly consisted of watching the birds make a home for themselves in his overgrown backyard. Then one day in late April, just as spring was settling into itself and the birds were finding their voices, he fell. And that was it.

He and I were not particularly close. We lived ten minutes from each other and saw each other frequently, mainly for holiday dinners and family gatherings. When I was younger, I was scared of him and would flee the room when he’d approach me. A few years ago I found an old home video he shot on his camcorder. He’s filming me in the foyer, I can’t be older than three, four tops, and he’s calling out my name. You can see his fingers waving out to me, eclipsing the lens. I stare back at him, as if he’s a stranger, and run into the kitchen as fast as my chubby legs will fly.

When news came that he died, I was 200 miles away from my family living in a city that he hated. I came home for a week in May and we had his memorial service at his favorite church, the same church he used to take my sister and I to for Sunday mass when we were little. It smelled the same: must, stale perfume, and Catholic guilt. My father asked me if I’d like to say something during the service and I declined. I was the only grandchild who didn’t get up and speak. I watched my newly widowed grandmother start to sob and the heavy, cardboard taste of communion wafers choked my throat. Afterwards, several elderly strangers gave me too-tight hugs and shared stories of how they used to play baseball with him. How they were his down-the-street neighbors back in the 80s. How they worked with him many years ago when he used to wield a chainsaw and run his own tree care business.

We called him Papa and he was a funny man. Not in a joke-telling sense, but in a way that meant he had his own secret language and his favorite food was peanut butter. He loved to wink and reuse Dunkin Donuts coffee cups for other purposes. He put the word “Loo” upside down on his bathroom door. He cared for enough stray cats to create a neighborhood problem. And above all, he was most comfortable with a camera in his hands and his eye behind a lens.

My father, his son, went through his things a few months after he died and found two film cameras; a Pentax Super Program and an Olympus Stylus Epic. He told me that Papa would have wanted me to have them and I knew he was right.

I took them to a photo store eleven blocks from my apartment in New York City. I was overwhelmed with the complexities of film photography and needed someone to look me in the eye and tell me what to do. The store broadcasted itself as the “largest non-chain photo and video equipment store in the US” and it felt like a shopping mall on Mars. There was a conveyor belt on the ceiling that zoomed processed film around the store and security guards manned every corner. The aisles were filled with birken-stock-clad couples holding hands and all the employees were smiling too hard in their emerald smocks. No one can possibly be that happy when wearing a smock. I found my way over to the film section of this odd world I had wandered into and waited in the queue. Every worker in the film department was a man and they were all wearing yarmulkes. A man named Joseph asked what he could do for me. I lifted the two cameras out of my tote and explained my situation. These were my grandfather’s and I have no idea what I’m doing, I admitted.

He eagerly scooped up the Pentax and his face became iridescent. This is a marvelous camera! If you don’t want it, I will buy from you! he offered with a toothy grin and a slight accent I couldn’t place. No, no, I repeated with a slight smile myself, I want to learn.

After giving the two cameras a physical examination, Joseph broke the news. The Olympus was unfortunately very, very broken. I saw this coming as it was clear that my grandfather had, at one point, dropped the device and shoddily attempted to tape it back together with packaging tape: a very Papa-like attempt at surgery. This one however, he said gesturing to the Pentax, is in perfect condition! A wonderful camera.

Film is like cooking, Joseph offered, you have to try and try, even if you don’t think the flavors will go together. He gave me another of what I gathered to be one of his signature grins and I could tell he was pleased with the simile he had just created.

I watched him operate on the pieces and observed him resuscitate this machine that had been collecting dust for years in my grandparents’ attic. Joseph tilted his glasses onto the top of his head, careful as to not displace his yarmulke, and peered into the viewfinder.

Guess what? I am looking at your eyelashes! He exclaimed with the joy of a child peering into a telescope, ogling the moon. They are so sharp, so, so sharp! Perfect.

I looked back at this man, his one free eye squinting at me and his curly, grey hair spilling out from behind the black box. I thought back to how many times I’d seen Papa do the same. All the times he’d settle behind the camera, documenting the world according to his own lens. Now, this different, funny old man was holding the very same device with such delicate, sweet care. And then I couldn’t breathe. My lungs grasped for oxygen that was nowhere to be found. I watched Joseph’s thick fingers skillfully dance around the lens and I began to cry. He noticed the wetness appear on my lashes, since the camera was, as he had told me earlier, perfectly and sharply focused on them. Joseph paused.

He lowered the camera and placed it safely, gently back into my hands. He offered my fingers a soft squeeze and grinned at me once more. Just experiment! And guess what? In many years, you may even be able to give this same camera to your own grandchildren! Now, huh, think about that!

I left the store and wandered uptown. It started to rain. I sought shelter under a bodega’s sun faded awning and my fingers itched. I reached into my bag, careful as to not get any water onto the recently revived camera. I held the piece up to my eyes and looked through the window. I didn’t press the shutter; I just quietly peered around at the dancing umbrellas and the grey sky swirling above me.

I thought back to the last piece of wisdom Joseph gave me before I left. Buy a little notebook and every time you take a photo, write down the settings, lighting, location, everything! Document it. You will only learn by experimenting and growing from your mistakes. On the corner of 39th and 9th, I began my quest into the terrifying world of film. With the guidance of Joseph and a handme-down Pentax, I’m going to try to see the world differently. I’m going to try and see the world through my grandfather’s lens.

This camera has a heartbeat. I hold it up to my ears and can hear its circulation. It contains the blood of my grandfather, of my father, of my own, of my future children, and of their future children. Not every photo will be good. I’m quite sure actually that my first few photos will be promptly thrown in the garbage but one day I’ll get something good. One day I’ll capture something that Papa would have loved. Maybe even something that he would have framed and hung on the dining room wall, next to my blue chicory.