Happy Birthday Jonathan

June 24th is my son Jonathan's birthday. He's 33 years old, the same age that I was when he was born.

As I was sorting through the contact sheets a few weeks ago looking for pictures to post on thepriceofsilver I wondered what would it look like if I scanned the contact sheets, then cropped out a few frames, made them bigger, and posted the images. It might be interesting to see several shots in a row, as they were shot! I decided not to "clean them up" or increase the contrast. This is the way they look.

In the top picture Stephanie is teaching Jonathan to eat solid food from a spoon. Below that Patty is playing with him. She now has grown kids of her own.

Last night she called after seeing some of these pictures posted on the blog. She wants to get some prints. "For the memories." I'm thinking maybe I should tell her to come over and print them herself. When I first met her she was a student at Barry College taking a photography class. She wanted to use my darkroom for a special project she was working on. That was close to forty years ago. The sink, the enlargers, everything is where it was back then. She might even enjoy doing it!

My Son Jonathan

I was attempting to make mayhem out of madness, an impossible task really, but it was raining outside all damned day just like yesterday so I decided to do laundry. The darkroom is the laundry room. I designed it that way. The washing machine drains into the sink and the top is extra counter space used for the paper cutter.

I noticed that the wooden counter where the two enlargers sit was about invisible beneath the clutter, everything from dodging tools to boxes of reloadable cassettes, masking tape, a couple of pair of scissors, and scads of "work prints", the prints you make to see how the image looks bigger than a contact sheet or with a different contrast or to zero in on exposure. Another function for them is using the backside for scrbbling phone numbers and reminders to myself to do this or do that. That was the madness that I needed to change into simple mayhem.

Towards the bottom of one pile I found this photo. The last time I'd really cleaned the place was, I think, about seven years ago, about the time that my daughter Elena decided that I was the cause of all of her problems and stopped talking to me. Jonathan still talks to me. He'll turn 33 later this month so I'm guessing that he was about 25 when I took this photo of him. I have no idea what restaurant or which city. I do see that there's an ashtray on the table so it dates back to when smoking sections were still to be found.

Tomorrow is my daughter Elena's birthday. I guess I'll dig out a shot of her to post. Or maybe I just won't bother.