23 hours ago
12
When my sister handed me a box of old Kodachrome slides last summer, I almost didn’t bother looking through them. Unusually for pre-smartphone times, my camera-crazy father had extensively documented our lives, filling dozens of photo albums. What could the transparencies possibly reveal that we hadn’t already seen countless times? I dimly remembered him ambushing us to watch slideshows, until we were old enough to rebel.
My father died in 2012. Not long before, I had developed an interest in photography myself and, after he was gone, I found solace in my viewfinder. It was, and still is, a way of feeling connected to him. What prompted me to set up my iPad as a makeshift lightbox to view the slides was technical interest.
One of the first images out of the box was of my mother and me on the tarmac at Heathrow airport. We are about to board an Air India plane to Kolkata. We had lots of photos from that holiday, all of them black and white prints, conventional snaps, but I had never seen this epic photo before.
My father came to Glasgow from India to finish his medical training in 1958 and, a few years later, met my mother who was a nurse at the same hospital. On this trip, my mother would meet her in-laws for the first time, and I my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.
Until that point in my four-year-old life, India had loomed large in my mind as an enchanted kingdom, the backdrop to my father’s many tales about his own childhood, which often featured kleptomaniac monkeys, magicians, precious jewels and an alarming number of snakes. My memories of our Kolkata trip are a bit more quotidian – shopping for shoes, going to a Chinese restaurant where we had chicken sweetcorn soup.
I love this image because there are so many telling details. My mother, always a stylish dresser, looks like an extra from Mad Men. Staring dreamily into the distance was not an uncommon state in which to find her – but in this instance, it could well have been because she was bored of waiting for my father to compose his shot. Meanwhile, duffle-coated me is engaged in a glaring competition with another small child. It’s an uncomfortable reminder of what life was like as an only child. Before the arrival of my sister the following year, I’d been introverted and suspicious of other kids, perceiving them as a threat.
And to the right there’s a glimpse into another family’s story – the voluminous hand luggage and the woman in the Dalmatian-spotted coat clutching an oversized teddy bear. All of this contributes to the sense of drama and occasion about overseas travel that existed back then. Meanwhile, the vintage Air India livery featuring its playful maharaja and the bright orange logo emblazoned on every step lend a festive air.
As I looked through slide after incredible slide, I had the oddest sensation of feeling like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, seeing my childhood turn from monotonous monochrome to glorious Technicolor before my eyes. It was also poignant that, with the benefit of my new-found photographic knowledge, I could finally appreciate the skill and talent required to make these pictures. So much so that, lately, I have found myself perusing geeky websites about vintage projectors and the best ways to shoot colour transparencies. Anyone fancy coming over to watch a slideshow?
