As I looked through the few images that were available to me from the family photographs in my possession, it occurred to me that many of us look for several things in albums: to remember, to show (to ourselves or to others), to look for meaning and clues to our own identity and significance.

This last item—the search for meaning—seems to be particularly important, given the number of people who pay strangers to pick through their DNA samples to help support personal narratives… or to create new ones (“so that’s why I like seafood—I’m 3% Viking!”).

However much we may pretend that we are good postmodern people and have done away with grand narratives, we really want to know where we come from and what our lives “mean.” For some, family albums are a tool for for doing just that: if I can see those who went before me, I can not only spot a familiar jawline or hair colour, but might be able to identify the source of internal traits like personality, psychology or preferences.

For me, this is where the interplay of “nature versus nurture” becomes important. I might be able to recognize cheek bones in a creased photograph of my great-grandparents and their children (including my grandfather as a toddler), but we have lived different lives, with vastly different expectations, in different times, on different continents. There might be something in our shared nature to enlighten me, but it would involve a lot of projection for one photograph to overcome the impacts of nurture.

I was struck by Soomin Ham’s Portraits and Windows portfolio (Soomin Ham, s.d.) which I came across recently in a magazine article (Montrone, 2021). The images, combined black and white photographs of different generations of the artist’s family, portray well the shadowy influences and presences of those who have gone before. They are still held in memory, but their outlines are less distinct with each passing year and generation.

My ancestors, too, stand like a faded negative behind the arc of my own life, from baby, to young graduate, to retired man. It probably means something, but it’s hard to know exactly what—perhaps it means just as much as I want it to.

Can it be that different for anyone else?