Recently I started saving vintage photos to use as references in drawing. I’ve always been a bit of a history nerd, but since I started doing genealogy, the interest as reached levels of obsession – and using old photos of my own family as drawing references are what started me on the genealogy journey. I love how so many of my interests just follow the thread of curiosity from one to the next.
I used to think I knew a lot about history. There’s something different about studying the past from the perspective of regular people, not the stuff deemed important by the powers that be. I knew nothing. It seems every time I start researching one topic, I come back up with a dozen questions that should have been answered in the history books. Even vintage photography tells so many remarkable stories about how people lived, struggled, loved.
I originally started collecting the photos because it’s easier to find the kinds of subjects I want to draw in vintage photos. However, it has sparked so many other curiosities – and it’s one of the reasons I want to get back to my camera and photography, Ilove that we can tell stories through images, that they speak so clearly and yet hold so many mysteries.
