Every picture tells a story

I know, I know, again with the pictures, but this time there's only five, and they've each got some sort of story going on.  Part of me wishes I knew the real story, and part of me is deeply pleased by the various stories I've made up even though not all the stories are happy.  But I love using my imagination.

So first we have this one:

And the story in this one isn't immediately obvious because of the quality of the print.  Your eyes focus on the horse, naturally, since the rope draws your eyes up that way.  But look at the man anchoring the rope.  Yeah.  Cool, right?  A black man working side by side with a white man in a day when they were in no way considered equals.  Except, obviously, they were. Definitely a story there.

Picture 2:

 
Two men and their kids.  A nice family shot, perhaps, and we can speculate that one of the wives is behind the camera. 

So where's the other wife? 

Or maybe, just maybe, they weren't just friends?  Hey, a girl's gotta dream.

Then in picture 3:

 

Okay, you look at the picture and it's a couple in front of their house, and I'm sure that's true.  But the story is in the subtleties.  The ground is dusty and barren, but the house is nice, as is the car (anyone have any idea what kind of car that is?), and the couple is nicely dressed.

So why don't they look happy?  And notice, he's holding her.  She's not holding him.  There's tension there. 

On to picture 4:

 

The joy of this picture is the actual joy.  These girls are having fun.  Five girls crouched down in a meadow of flowers, laughing.  Why are they there?  Who's taking the picture?  It looks like a picnic of some sort, and this seems to be one of those moments when you say "I wish I could hold onto this fragile point in time forever", and someone tried.  There's true delight here!

Incidentally, I think the second girl on the left, the one with the flyaway hair, is my step-grandmother, but I could be wrong.

And then picture 5, which to me is the most evocative:

 
Oh, I want to know the story here!  I'm seeing all kinds of darkness and danger, sadness and hurt, anger and treachery.  I could be wrong, but man, there's something powerful here.

You've got an older man, a younger man and a young woman.  Father, son, daughter?  And is Mom taking the picture?  Maybe.  But maybe not.  The possibilities are enormous.

Look at the girl.  She's wearing pants in a time when women wore dresses all the time, even to work.  But she doesn't have an air of rebellion, does she?  Of flouting convention.  No.  She's looking at the ground, not meeting the camera's "eye".  She's holding herself tightly in.  Why?  Is she sad?  Scared?  I wish I knew.

And look at the younger man.  There's someone with confidence.  He's good looking, he knows it, he gets his way.  He's wearing what appear to be riding jodhpurs and boots, pretty fancy for a working guy.  They might not be formal riding clothes, of course.  In any case, there's pride and a certain arrogance there, which makes the contrast between him and the girl even more stark.

The older man is the one working, and he looks slightly annoyed at having his picture taken.  I wonder why that is? 

There's a story here, oh my yes.

As I say, I've been having a blast with these.  I really have enjoyed looking through them simply because I don't know who they are, but I knew someone who knew all these people, which is kind of intriguing.

In any case, in my opinion these pictures stand on their own, and I love the way they've captured my imagination.  Oh, the stories I'm imagining!

Comments

[Deanna]

I love this. As a point of interest, my Dad, who studies so many things, says that 76% of the cowboys were black, it was largely an brief era after the civil war, reall hard and poorly paid work, and it was available to whomever wanted to suffer though it. Some, of course, did OK and went on to own their own places or homestead their way, but others just grunt labour.