As directed by Jack Maguire's activity at the end of chapter 8, "A Photo Opportunity" from his book poignantly titled, The Power of Personal Storytelling… I found a photo of myself and one or more family members, that's at least fiver years old, preferably older, and jumped right into the activity.
The photo I chose happens to be forty years old and as soon as I pulled it out of an old family photo album, memories of my childhood came flooding back, along with a bunch of possibly story ideas. In doing the research on this photo, I uncovered, and was frightfully reminded, just how drastically different my brother and sisters' memories of our childhood are.
Step one of the activity says to place the photograph in front of you so that you can comfortably study it. My roughly scribbled notes from doing the activity reveal the photo was from 1975 and I know this immediately because it says '75 on the back of the photo. It's a summer family vacation, and we are on the way to Montana and Nebraska. My notes go on to read, "Me, age 11, the year I turned into a boy, half of us are angry, or distracted, 2 kids with fake/forced smiles, and my little sister, Tricia, looks like Nicholas from the 80's television show Eight is Enough, she looks dazed and confused."
Step three says to ask yourself a bunch of questions, like, if I didn't know the occasion for the photograph, what would I assume it to be? My answer: I'd assume the occasion to be the same as it actually was – a forced-photo on a family vacation across the country where seven of us were crammed in an old station-wagon for hours and hours. Another question asks, If I didn't know the individuals in the photograph, including myself, what kind of people would I take them to be? My snarky answer: I'd take them to be a miserably unhappy family with some serious problems.
Maguire named his book The Power of Personal Storytelling for a reason. I'm finding the entire process of personal storytelling to be powerful. Doing this relatively simple activity, and thinking about story ideas from a photo is powerful. Telling the stories is powerful. Out of all the possible stories generated from this photo, I think I'm leaning towards something a little less serious, like a story about the year I turned into a boy… but you'll just have to wait and see.
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