I love estate sales. The hunt for treasures, especially old photographs, is always with me. But it is also the theater of these events, observing other peoples’ lives, that fascinates me. I found this sale while driving home after visiting with my Dad in his nursing home. Nursing homes can be sad places some days. For many, if not most, a nursing home is about waiting out Father Time. It is not about living, it is about dying. This day sitting with my father was one of those days. It was a dark afternoon of the soul, for him and for me. Leaving the nursing home, I saw a little estate sale sign. I thought this might be good medicine for the funk I was in – if not the buying of some “thing” – the walking through this little house could help shake off the Nursing Home Blues. I climbed the steps and began a walk through someone else’s life. Estate sales are a feast for the eyes. You are invited to wander through the house of someone who has passed on. All the things once important to the deceased are now for sale. Strangers walk through the house in the hopes of finding a treasure. My first stop is in the kitchen. I admire the little breakfast booth in the corner, big window overlooking a little yard, a birdfeeder in the tree. I imagine breakfasts shared there for many years. Only now, as I stand there, the table is covered with mismatched coffee cups, assorted kitchen utensils and a stack of old placemats. I walk on. The next stop is the dining room. As my eyes scan the room, in the corner I see, amidst dishes and china, one, large black and white photograph. It is the wedding portrait of a lovely young woman. Written across the bottom, in pencil, says Antonia Martini. Antonia Martini is a beautiful dark haired young woman in an elegant wedding dress with beading on the bodice. Her face is calm and her form is straight and poised. I recognize it as a photo like many others I have seen from this era (1940’s), a formal portrait meant to capture this momentous occasion. Now, here it sits, leaned against a stack of books, at an estate sale. I approached the woman sitting at a card table and show her the photo. She tells me the photo is her aunt and that I am standing in Antonia’s house. Antonia and her husband had lived here for over 50 years. It seems they had recently died within weeks of one another. As the woman told me this story, I looked at the photograph. No longer was this a stranger, now it was someone I knew something about. “If you want the picture, you can have it for five bucks.” she tells me. I return the photo to the dining room and continued my walk through this life. Iin a tiny bedroom upstairs I find hanging in the closet an old, wedding dress with beading at the bodice. I recognize it. It is the same dress I admired in the photograph. It is Antonia’s dress. Now, she is gone and there the dress hangs for me to see. I suddenly am overwhelmed with this life and this death. “Why are you feeling like this?” I scold myself. It is not someone you knew. It is not anyone who mattered to you. But I feel I do not belong here, going through her things looking for a treasure. I return to the front door, wishing the woman good luck with her sale. What I had hoped would be a diversion from thinking about how our old people are pushed away in nursing homes instead brought me full face with how we hope we all could leave the planet. With some dignity, in our own surroundings, with those we love near by. That happened for Antonia. The people in my father’s nursing home don’t feel at home. I see people who, because of serious illness or the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, are left where no one has time to care about who they were, what or who they loved. In small rooms, in stark surroundings, they live out their days waiting to join the ones who have passed on before them. I drove home in silence, seeing the photograph of Antonia in my mind’s eye. I thought of turning back, going in and buying it. For 5 bucks I could have Antonia Martini’s wedding picture. But I didn’t. It wasn’t the photo that was important now, but what it did to me and for me. I realized that nothing is happening in a photograph except what is happening to the one who sees it. It is what I bring to the observation that tells the story of the photo. It is my experience that brings life to the photograph. Instead of going back to buy the photograph of Antonia I drove home and sat down here at my computer to write about what I saw and felt and learned. It was a good estate sale. It brought some important feelings to light. It helped me remember to appreciate this moment for there is nothing more important than this day. I offer this story in the memory of Antonia Martini and a photograph of a young woman in her wedding dress.

I photographed these beads in a light-tent, using my Nikon D300 and SB-800 (camera-right) and a 60mm macro-lens. (1/250s at f11, ISO200). I have a lot more beads to photograph... I think these pictures are qualitatively OK - but they are not interesting or appealing. Any ideas on what I could do to really make them look fantastic as product that can be purchased (the bead that is, not the photo)?