“Myself”—The Story of a Summer Vacation

August 21 | 2024

Summer and water, they’re inseparable—essentials of the July or August beach holiday. The allure of a motorboat promising adventure on a lake resonates today, but here the year is 1951, the woman in the passenger seat, my mother to be. She’s nineteen, in love (though not yet with my father), and on the threshold of adult life. The photographer, her brawny beau, an equestrian and a smooth talker, is about to assume the wheel. 

As told in my memoir, The Smallest Objective, my mother wasn’t from an affluent family. Nonetheless, by the twentieth century, the beach holiday, once the preserve of the wealthy, had become a feature of summer for many families of modest means. That’s why Kodak, as early as 1907, was advertising its camera in Woman’s Home Companion as a must-have to recount “The Story of a Summer Vacation.” As the female audience was instructed, “It’s all simple. Press the button—do the rest—or leave it to another—Just as you please.”

From the array of pictures in my mother’s album The Story of My Life, it’s evident that she took abundant photos, quite likely with a Kodak camera, as well as posing for them. She demonstrated, too, another habit—and not one prescribed in Woman’s Home Companion. Curiously, my mother captioned photos in which she was the subject, labelling them “Myself.” She had become not merely the focal point, but her own audience. 

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