The Literary Mirror

What was the first gap you noticed in the family record?

No wedding photographs of my grandparents at all — not one. I assumed for years they simply predated the family owning a camera, until an aunt mentioned, almost in passing, that there had been photographs, and that my grandmother burned them after my grandfather's death.

How did you approach reconstructing events you had no images for?

Interviews, mostly, and a studio ledger I found by accident, which listed sittings the family no longer has prints of. I treated every account as partial and said so on the page rather than smoothing the gaps into a cleaner story.

Did writing the book change your understanding of your grandmother?

It made me less certain I understood her at all, which I think is the honest outcome of most memoir projects like this one. I didn't find an explanation for the burning. I found a pattern, which isn't the same thing.