Before There Were Photographs, You Painted Your Family...

When Portrait Was Memory
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I know, I usually do current events, or various fixations (Universities, Soda Pop). However, this story touched on a couple of interesting memories which I'd like to share with you:

1. In one of my last visits to a friend I happened upon a portrait I hadn't seen before. It was dark, but still viewable; I asked my friend who it was. Turned out it was his mother who was painted, and his father was able to win it at a carnival game.
   
2. When I went to a party at a friend of a friend's house during the nineties, I should have looked around at how the second floor was hanging from the ceiling; but at the entryway was a really good picture. I asked where the householder got it, he said he inherited it, and that it was unusually good quality for a portrait. I had to agree, as it literally stole the show from the house itself.
   

It is interesting, in this age of digital photographs taking the photo beyond disposability to almost invisible overabundance, to view hints of a time when a portrait (however sloppily done) was given a place almost alongside the Bible in importance.

Indeed, in a way I'm always interested in ways of doing stuff that predate what we have now. While it's fun typing stuff on the computer and other stuff, it's always good to see how things were done. Especially since civilization has gone backwards before, probably more times than we know about.