Through My Grandfather’s Lens

In sixth grade, I won second place in a school-wide, photography contest for our local newspaper. The photo was a blurred close-up of a dewy, blue chicory flower in a hotel parking lot. I showed my grandfather my work, as photography had always been the one bond besides blood that we truly shared. He told me he loved it and I knew he meant it. To this day, the photo remains framed in my grandparent’s dining room.

He died this past spring. We had been expecting it, as he was old and had a particularly nasty disease that left him with lungs that worked too hard to find oxygen that wasn’t there. He relied on a tank to breathe and for the last year of his life, his days mainly consisted of watching the birds make a home for themselves in his overgrown backyard. Then one day in late April, just as spring was settling into itself and the birds were finding their voices, he fell. And that was it.

Him and I were not particularly close. We lived ten minutes from each other and saw each other frequently, mainly for holiday dinners and family gatherings. When I was young, I used to be scared of him and would flee the room when he’d approach me. A few years ago I found an old home video he shot on his camcorder. He’s filming me in the foyer, I can’t be older than three, four tops, and he’s calling out my name. You can see his fingers waving out to me, eclipsing the lens. I nervously stare back at him, as if he’s a stranger, and then run away into the kitchen. This was more so due to my horrendous shyness as a child rather than him having a threatening presence but still, I’ve always felt really bad about that.

When news came that he died, I was over 200 miles away from my family living in a city that he hated. I came home for a week in May and we had his memorial service at his favorite church. The same church he used to take my sister and I to for Sunday mass when we were little. It smelled the same: must, stale perfume, and Catholic guilt. My father asked me if I’d like to say something during the service and I declined. I was the only grandchild who didn’t get up and speak. I watched my newly widowed grandmother start to sob and the heavy taste of cardboard communion wafers choked my throat. Afterwards several elderly strangers gave me too-tight hugs and shared stories of how they used to play baseball with him. How they were his down-the-street neighbors back in the 80s. How they worked with him many years ago when he used to wield a chainsaw and run his own tree care business.

We called him Papa and he was a funny man. Not in a joke-telling sense, but in a way that meant he had his own secret language and his favorite food was peanut butter. He loved to wink and reuse Dunkin Donuts coffee cups for other purposes. He put the word “Loo” upside down on his bathroom door. He cared for enough stray cats to create a neighborhood problem. And above all, he was most comfortable with a camera in his hands and his eye behind a lens.

My father, his son, went through his things a few months after he died and found two film cameras; a Pentax Super Program and an Olympus Stylus Epic. He told me that Papa would have wanted me to have them and I knew he was right.

I took them to a photo store eleven blocks from my new apartment in New York City. I was overwhelmed with the complexities of film photography and needed guidance. I could’ve just had some Internet stranger instruct me in a YouTube video but that felt wrong. The store broadcasted itself as the “largest non-chain photo and video equipment store in the US” and it felt like a shopping mall from another planet. There was a conveyor belt on the ceiling that zipped processed film from one end of the store to another and security guards manned every corner of the place. The aisles were filled with birkenstock-clad couples holding hands and all the employees were smiling too hard in their emerald smocks. No one can possibly be that happy when wearing a smock.

I found my way over to the film section of this odd world I had wandered into and waited in the queue. Every worker in the film department was a man and they were all wearing yarmulkes. A man named Joseph asked what he could do for me. I lifted the two cameras out of my tote and explained my situation. These used to be my grandfather's and I have no idea what I’m doing with them, I admitted.

He hungrily scooped up the Pentax and muttered some words under his breath with glee. This is a marvelous camera! If you don’t want it, I will buy from you! he offered with a toothy grin and a slight accent I couldn’t place. No, no, I repeated with a slight smile myself, I want to learn.

After giving the two cameras a physical examination, Joseph broke the news. The Olympus was unfortunately very, very broken. I saw this coming as it was clear that my grandfather had, at one point, dropped the device and shoddily attempted to tape it back together with packaging tape. The Pentax however, it is in perfect condition! A wonderful camera. Joseph told me.

Film is like cooking, Joseph offered, you have to try and try, even if you don’t think the flavors will go together. He gave me another of what I sensed to be one of his signature grins and I could tell he was pleased with the simile he had just created.

I watched him operate on the pieces and observed him resuscitate this machine that had been collecting dust for ten years in my grandparents’ attic. Joseph tilted his glasses onto the top of his head, careful as to not displace his yarmulke, and peered into the viewfinder.

Guess what? I am looking at your eyelashes! He exclaimed with the joy of a child peering into a telescope and exploring the Milky Way. They are so sharp, so, so sharp! Perfect.

I looked back at this man, his one free eye squinting at me and his curly, grey hair spilling out from behind the black box. I thought back to how many times I’d seen Papa do the same. All the times he’d settle behind the camera, documenting the world according to his own lens. Now, this different, funny old man was holding the very same device with such delicate care and admiration. I stared at Joseph’s weathered fingers skillfully dance around the lens and I started to cry. He noticed the wetness appear on my lashes since the lens was, as he had told me earlier, perfectly and sharply focused on them. Joseph paused.

He lowered the camera and placed it safely, gently back into my hands. He offered my fingers a warm squeeze and grinned at me once more. Just experiment! And guess what? In many years, you may even be able to give this same camera to your own grandchildren! Now, huh, think about that!

I left the store and wandered uptown. It started to rain. I sought shelter under a bodega’s awning and my fingers itched. I reached into my bag, careful as to not get any water onto the recently revived camera. The Pentax was deliciously heavy and I instantly took pleasure in its hefty presence in my thin hands. I held the piece up to my eyes and looked through the window. I didn’t press the shutter. I quietly peered around at all the umbrellas and the grey sky swirling above me.

I thought back to the last piece of wisdom Joseph gave me before I left. Buy a little notebook and every time you take a photo, write down the settings, lighting, location, everything! Document it. You will only learn by experimenting and growing from your mistakes. On the corner of 39th and 9th, I began my quest into the terrifying world of film. With the guidance of Joseph and a hand-me-down Pentax, I’m going to try to see the world differently. I’m going to try and see the world through my grandfather’s lens.

This camera has a heartbeat. I hold it up to my ears and can hear its circulation. It contains the blood of my grandfather, of my own, of my future children and of their children. Not every photo will be good. I’m quite sure actually that my first few photos will be promptly thrown in the garbage but one day I’ll get something good. One day I’ll capture something that Papa would have loved. Maybe even something that he would have framed and hung on the dining room wall, next to my blue chicory.

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