Local Library: Walking with my aunt in our hometown, our legs weary and the cold wind is far more frigid than what we’re used too . Most of our conversation is about growing up, and the imminent death of her mother, my grandmother. Wandering into the local library to warm up, we come upon a special section reserved for yearbooks from the local high school– with publications dating back to 1938. There’s a gap between the 10’s and now, but up until at least 2000 there’s one book per year.
So I snap photos of what’s inside.
Kids posing with guns and cigarettes. Some leaning up against farm equipment, sexualizing the profession. Others , like my youngest uncle, with kinky curls ironed straight.
In some ways, these were the last photographs of these people as kids, and the first as adults, going out to the world to pursue their dreams if they had any. In observing some of the people, however, it seems that their dreams stayed imprisoned in their head, in the jail of black and white photography.
No matter how many times we open the book to release their dreams into reality, they stay put like tamed zoo animals.