Discovering my father’s wartime photo

Discovering my father’s wartime photo

I can’t even begin to describe the feelings I had when I discovered an envelope filled with negatives of photographs my father took during his time in Burma in World War II. This envelope contained several medium-format and 35mm negatives he took while serving in the 14th Army, Royal Armoured Corps, which was a tank corps of the British Army.

Years ago, I discovered a box full of hundreds of negatives he had taken after the war when he emigrated to the USA and travelled around and photographed post-war America. I’ve gone through them a few times and scanned a number of them, but I was astonished to realize I had somehow missed this particular envelope containing these special photographs from his time in the war.

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My grandfather Kostja

My grandfather Kostja

My grandfather Kostja Zetkin had an extremely interesting life. I didn’t get to spend a lot of time talking to him when I visited him at his home in British Columbia when I was younger, by that time he would speak mostly German to me with a big smile on his face completely forgetting that I didn’t understand a word he said. He was my step-grandfather as my grandmother Gertrude married him well after my father had been born.

This is a picture of Kostja as a young man on the left and as a much younger man on the right with his girlfriend Rosa Luxembourg. Kostja’s mother was Clara Zetkin, one of the leaders of the Weimar Republic and a staunch working-class feminist and advocate for women’s rights.

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…scanned from my archive. My grandmother Fanny

…scanned from my archive. My grandmother Fanny

My grandmother Fanny was one of the sweetest and kindest people I ever knew, almost to a fault. She lived for her family and friends and would literally do anything to help or support them, but as a result I always wondered about her own happiness.

She raised my mother and her brother Jerry, and helped my grandfather Boris run his photo studio on the boardwalk, just downstairs from their ocean view apartment in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. I of course have dozens of photos my grandfather took of her, posing almost demurely for the camera in his studio, on the boardwalk, the beach or their roof (otherwise known as tar beach). These two photos were mixed in amongst them all, but stood out because they were not the typical poses or expressions I see in most of the other photos of her.

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…scanned from my archive. My mom’s 97th birthday

…scanned from my archive. My mom’s 97th birthday

…scanned from my archive. My mom’s 97th birthday

Yikes! Today my mom turned 97 today. In honor of this event I pulled out a few of my favorites and a few I’ve not shared before.

I literally have hundreds of photos of my mother growing up in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. As I’ve mentioned many times, my grandfather had a photo studio right on the boardwalk near Brighton 4th Street. In our family, growing up in front of the camera was a big part of our lives. My mother, her brother Jerry, myself and my cousins Michael and Leslee all spent part of our formative years posing in the studio for my grandfather.

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…scanned from my archive. Tim and Nico go out Midwest – 1974

…scanned from my archive. Tim and Nico go out Midwest – 1974

In 1974 my brothers Tim and Nico took a trip out the Midwest to visit their grandparents. My stepmother Susan was originally from Minnesota but her parents had relocated to Missouri and so the family took off for the heartland. Along the way they stopped for a visit to Mount Rushmore.

I love this shot that my father took. The quintessential snapshot would have typically had my brothers facing the camera, framed from head to toe (because we all know how important it is to include footwear in meaningful family portraits), with the four presidents shrunk to minuscule versions of…

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…scanned from my archive. My Jesus years

…scanned from my archive. My Jesus years

…scanned from my archive. As it is holiday time, I thought a few photos from what I would call my “Jesus Years” would be appropriate. From about 1972-1974 I looked like my hero at the time, George Harrison, and that meant hair down to my ass and a goatee. Although I was only 18, he was the Beatle I admired the most, probably because he was the main guitar player and I was aspiring to be one as well.

The first photo is from my High School graduation at good old Seward Park HS located on New York’s lower east side. The reason for the informal dress was I happened to graduate in January of 1972, 6 months earlier than the rest of the class of ’72. We held a brief and “come as you are” reception for which I felt a suede fringe jacket was just right for the occasion.

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