Let me tell you how much I love this photo.

Let me tell you how much I love this photo.

A close look at the story this picture is telling.

Last week, I was making a final pass through my proof copy of Our So-Called Safe and Perfect Bodies, and noticed one of the images was subpar and I would need to retake it.

The ancient family photo albums are on crumbling black paper, the bindings have come undone, and they are all in need of some form of archival preservation. I try to handle them as little as possible. I try to imagine what they looked like when they were new, who affixed the photographs to the paper, and all of the places these albums have traveled since they were arranged.

I sat back down with Mom in front of the trunk where she keeps all of the family albums and together we went through them again. I was only supposed to be looking for that one particular photo, but I couldn’t resist going page by page.

I’m so glad I did, because tucked away in between a stack of photos was one I’d never before encountered.

I believe it is my grandfather’s office

I keep trying to analyze it for clues.

The walls are utilitarian plywood. There are glossy photographs pinned to the wall using flat metal pushpins. There are clipboards holding documents that I can’t read but it looks production-oriented. There are built-in cubbies that look like they pull out from the wall. Simple shelves with leaning volumes of books.

The only book whose spine I can read says BRAUN. An internet search tells me the Braun Corporation of Los Angeles was a chemicals and laboratory supply company. This makes sense. Zooming in on the photographs pinned to the walls, I can’t make out the shapes in the ones below the bookshelves. On the back wall, I see some of the lettuce/cabbage leaf motif dishes. Definitely the fish motif. And for sure the turkey, which I have.

The big mystery for me is, what are those figures in the bottom right four photos? They almost look like people but from no series that I recognize.

Zooming in on the desk, I love how messy it is! There’s only one thing I think I recognize, this duck. I am imagining at least one of those bowls is an ashtray (Brad smoked!) but which one is anyone’s guess.

All told, what I see is a mind at work. No need to pretty anything up. Just a snapshot of the office on an ordinary workday. There is another stack of bowls on the floor, a box of who-knows-what, a pencil sharpener on the wall. The chair is pushed back from the desk, as though Brad spontaneously decided to get up and take a photo. He is not in the photo, but everything in the photo is about him. Good light and ventilation from the window behind the desk.

I am imagining this must have been taken somewhere in the late 1940s or the very, very early 1950s.

Who was this man? He was more than just my mother’s father. He devoted his life to his work and it very likely killed him.