This year I decided to fully embrace an act I had been leaning toward for years. Most of my influences in life came from my Mom, but this particular idea came from my Dad. I have always loved old family photos. Of everyone. And throughout my adult life, I have felt an intuitive need to document myself. I know one day I will admire my young adult image deeply. A younger image informs you so much of who you are. Looking at pictures of me as a baby reminds me that I am pure, loving, and full of joy. Looking at how my mom dressed me reminds me that I have style and sweetness. And looking at my parents, so young and cute, reminds me that they were happy and optimistic. Which at times, is hard to imagine.

My father documented my life. He would snap away at my childhood from infancy until my second sibling was born. The third child gets the scraps, hence why I predict I won’t have more than 2 children. There are many beautiful images of my childhood taken on a film camera. Over the years, I would dig up the prints in different garages, and the photos would resurface. Mostly in family group chats, with the quality worsened by my Mom’s iPhone snapping a photo of the print. This always kills me. My photography classes gave me a darkroom education. I loved the way colors shift and saturate on color film, creating a beautiful feeling that artists now are replicating digitally. Somewhere around 2007, my dad bought a digital camera and a computer. He continued to document my childhood with my two younger brothers. I learned from him that technology will always outdate itself. The computer my dad stored all of the photos from the second half of my childhood was one of the first Mac computers. And the only way to access the images is with an outdated plug that requires an adapter that is infrequently accessible online. We could just blame my dad for not storing the photos properly. But that was the best technology of that time! The tech that is the best right now, is always going to change. Film will always be beautiful quality and beautiful colors. And, no matter what year it is, you will always be able to shine a light through a negative. Film is a time capsule. It is tangible, and if stored properly, it will always EXIST.

Images are not often tangible anymore. They literally disappear. They are lost in the cloud, and are resurfaced in a fleeting timehop, snapchat, or groupchat. But what I have responded to so deeply in learning about photography is how important it is to document one's life.

Just now I received a text from my Dad asking me if I still have a stereo he gave me as a teenager. What I have to tell him is that after four years of having it in my room in his house, and another eight years with me in Los Angeles, about twelve moves in total, I finally gave the stereo to Goodwill. My dad had given me this stereo to play records on in my 14 year old bedroom. An act of love. In doing it he spoke of its value and importance. Since then it has had no use. As I was moving and donating during a painful breakup, I thought it was time for it to have a new home. I lazily didn’t check to see if my Dad wanted it back. That stereo was a treasure to him. He bought it in Seattle when he was a young adult. And I gave it away in Los Angeles as a young adult. It pains me to have to tell my dad the truth. I have given away his treasure. I have betrayed him. Our objects are our treasures. They are time capsules. Maybe we save up for them, attach power and love. And if we have children who care, they will inherit these treasures. I have many. And I fill my studio apartment with them. And my home feels like a home, because it is filled with items that were simple, but passed down to me. And if my daughter gives it all away I will never forgive her. Just kidding, maybe I will.

This is what I am aiming to do for my child. But I realized something. My daughter will probably never know what music I was listening to. What I liked to wear, and do, at this time in my life. She won’t know who I liked to hang out with on a Tuesday night. If I take photos on my Pentax and get them printed for $11 a roll, and put them in a black leather photo album, those people exist on another level. They inform her of my life. Maybe in the photos, one of her godparents, or even her father will appear. She will compare her life to mine. She might know what I was wearing, who I liked to spend my Tuesdays with, and where I liked to go. She will know what my face looked like at 26, and see how it compares to hers. Thanks to my family, I know how similar I look to my Grandma. It warms me to my core. Probably deeper now as we are estranged. I am incredibly unobjective when it comes to my own body and face. But my family speaks of my Grandma’s beauty, and it makes me feel beautiful to see how similar our faces were at two different points in time.

We don’t like to think that objects have power. The same way we don’t like to think that work can make us feel valuable. We want to feel at peace without silly comforts. Like monks or yogis. I am of the opinion that having a collection of objects, not garbage, but treasures of one’s personality, is proof of life. When I was 20, I went through a period of, I don't even know what to call it, but I would look around my bedroom and contemplate my own existence. Somehow, without realizing it, I created a home that was killing me. There was very little air in the room. My bed frame was broken, held up with books that I haven’t read. The walls were white with minimal images taped up lazily. My clothes were too large or too small. I looked around the room I had lived in for a year and it felt like the room of a person I didn’t know. At the time these sorts of contemplations were a daily occurrence. I eventually brought myself back to life, and one of the ways I was able to do that was with the help of my Mom. I needed her. She visited me and spent her money on me. At the time, this was a heartbreaking idea. I didn’t want her to see her creation so empty, and broken. She took me to buy a desk, new bedding, a lamp, and a nightstand. Simple things. But at that time in my life, I was so frugal with money, I would have never been able to buy such things for myself. After she bought me these objects, and after she left town, I felt strange at first. Even more sad at times. Like I was undeserving, and out of place. But eventually, and subconsciously, I created a routine, and the room felt brighter, even if nothing else in my life was. And that slipped into the back of my psyche. And I started to do more things for myself. Slowly. The idea of making a home, even in a shitty building, when you have no money, is a deeply profound and important act. I went on to do great things for myself. I think learning to care for your space, leads to caring for yourself, leads to caring for your life, leads to action. It was after this point, I began to treat objects as artifacts, and my room as sacred.

On a larger, more existential level, our treasures are what make us human. If I had a Kindle, I wouldn’t have a bookshelf filled with books. I certainly don’t have a CD collection, or DVDs. But my parents did, and when I went to my dad’s attic, I learned my mom loved Mazzy Star, just like I do. When I brought it up I realized she listened to Mazzy at a perhaps sad point in her life. It’s also difficult for me to listen to music from particular moments in time. My mother and father’s treasures have taught me how similar I ended up being to them. When I was 18 and moved out, I didn’t feel proud. I wanted to start my own life, and I did not want to inherit the shortcomings of my parents. Now I know that is an inevitable confrontation, but beautiful once accepted. I appreciate how similar I have become to them. I am my mother, and I am my father. Many people point out how different my parents are. But there had to have been a time when their differences complemented each other perfectly. I am the exact product of that marriage. I am a blended up mixture of a person, of their creation. And that is genuinely how I feel every day. I have changed over and over again. I thought I was one thing, and next week I am another entirely.

My treasures and images have grounded my existence, which may always feel in flux.