I love this old photo of my mother, (sitting front and center) with what I assume are some of the other neighborhood kids plus her uncle Ben, the tall fellow in the back row. It’s obviously a posed picture, probably taken by my grandfather somewhere in Brighton Beach where they lived and where he had his photo studio.

It’s hard to say if this was just a fun, quirky shot he decided to do, or if it had some purpose. But I noticed that all the kids are all wearing baseball caps, or holding them, except for the girl in the back row. A few balloons are scattered around as well. Hard not to notice how well-dressed they all are, some in their little overcoats, and some of the boys even have suits on.

In any case, it’s a window into a time long gone and part of the story we can only guess at but still enjoy.

Everybody should have a happy place and time. Mine were the summers I spent growing up in fire Island. My parents started going out there in the 1950s, initially just camping on the beach with friends, and eventually building their own simple house with green tiled shingles and a sloping white trimmed roof. No vehicles there, all walking around on boardwalk. You could walk the width of the island in about five minutes in some locations. 

The foliage was scarce, it was mostly sand, but included beach plums, wild cherry trees, and unfortunately a fair amount of poison ivy. Getting through the summer without at least one outbreak of poison ivy, a stubbed toe, and a massive number of splinters was rare, but all part of the summer experience, and when you factor in the amazing ocean beaches, the beautiful weather, and a sense of really being away from the world, it was worth it all. 

Today when I meditate, I go to fire Island. I’m sitting on a staircase leading down to the beach and overlooking the water, and the dunes and beach which seem to extend out into infinity. So glad I had my summers out there.

I’ve mentioned many time that my Grandfather, Boris Lenoff, owned and ran a portrait studio on the Coney Island Boardwalk in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. It later moved to Ocean Parkway and probably closed sometime in the sixties when he sold off the entire inventory of cameras and photo files.

Back then a photographer had to be more than just good at taking pictures, they had to be a chemist; making all their own chemical baths for developing film and prints, a mathematician to figure out exposures and lighting ratios, an artist who could artfully retouch prints with pen and brush, and a social director who knew his neighbors and could work with kids and get them to sit still in front of the camera.. The latter probably being the most challenging task of them all.

Shortly after I was born, I started to have my picture taken by my Grandpa, in what would become a regular routine. I, and sometimes my cousin Michael, were shuttled out to Brooklyn for photo sessions, posing in an array of diapers, blankets and period piece outfits of questionable taste.

What is so strange to me as I sit here and view these photos today is that they look so vintage, as if I was looking at some historical photos of a child in a bygone era with stiff poses and clothing so out of fashion they never even came back in fashion in the past fifty years. An old prop plane in my hand in one photo is also kind of telling.

But it is me. I guess I’m vintage, at least my childhood is.

A lot of what contributes to this disconnect is the style the photos are done with. Not quite the Stepford family creepy smile look that one might find from a typical Sears Portrait, but the softness and look is of a certain era. And then there is the fact that it is in black and white, this alone would indicate to someone like my 13 year old son that the photos might have well be taken during the Civil War.

I put my photos in chronological order and saw myself age from a few months to about six years old, when my Grandfather probably closed the studio and retired.

There is a certain perspective and completeness that one can only see when viewing one’s life in this chronological order. It is something I have been doing with my photos. Scan your old photos, create a time line and watch your life, well, come to life. Hopefully you won’t be vintage like me. More photos here…

…scanned from my archive. I spent my childhood Summers on Fire Island, the Pines for the most part. They are some of my happiest memories: the beach; the dunes; digging for clams in the Bay; and even getting splinters on the boardwalk are the things childhoods are made of. There were no cars (a few jeeps) or even sidewalks in the Pines, I doubt that’s changed even now.

In the early fifties, just before I was born and our house was built, my parents and grandparents would camp out in the dunes with their friends. Some of these people, like my father’s friend Hildegarde, built shacks out of driftwood nestled in the dunes just a few feet from the beach. Protected from the winds but close enough for an early morning swim in the Atlantic.

Evenings would be centered around a bonfire where the days catch of clams and crabs would be devoured with some good wine and beer. It must have been a great time to be out there, no houses, no real estate, just endless miles of beach, dunes, sky and water. Halcyon days living only in memories and these photos I found a few years ago. See more photos...

…scanned from my archive. Hanging out of your building’s roof was a popular place to spend hot summer days in Brooklyn, especially before air conditioning. It was commonly known as Tar Beach. My family’s apartment building was located right on the Coney Island Boardwalk in Brighton Beach, so the cool ocean breezes were plentiful and my grandparents and my mom and her brother Jerry spent hours up t here cooling off, playing chess or any other number of “other activities.” Life was good, and the Drifter’s even wrote two popular songs that summed up life out there – Up on the Roof and Under the Boardwalk, the latter of which was probably a better and more private place for some of those “other activities.” The view wasn’t bad either. See more photos

…scanned from my archive. Looking over a bunch of the recent scans I did, I came across this un-retouched photo from 1954 of my parents in a rare (like never) intimate moment caught on film. Never really noticed this photo before, but as someone whose parents divorced when I was seven in 1961, there is a fascination with their relationship prior to the divorce. I think it simply stems from the fact that I have so few memories of them as a couple, let alone a loving one. I have watched my own son Luke go through my divorce, and he was around the same age as myself when my parents split. Children grow up with the idea that their parents are a single unit, it is an inconceivable thought that they can exist apart from each other. The separation is an earth shattering event at the time, and one which I don’t think ever really gets resolved because the basic premise is unresolvable. Children being the self-centered little beings that they are, inevitably blame themselves, that is the hard part to watch with Luke. Sometimes I think I learn more from him than he does from me. Too heavy for a Tuesday?

…scanned from my archive. My cousin Michael and I grew up together in Kew Gardens, Queens until I was six. We lived next door to each other and played together every day, and as you can see the activities usually involved some form of western motif. Posing for my grandfather at his Brighton Beach photo studio was a regular occurrence, and having us pose in diapers bigger than our heads for some reason must have seemed to our parents like the stuff memories are made of, I guess if for nothing else than to assuredly embarrass us in our adulthood. One infamous day Michael ran down the alley next to our apartment screaming out loud that he was finally out of those damn diapers. My tense outward smile must have surely belied the churning feeling in my stomach that I would only understand later as envy. I love my cousin, but damn you Michael, it should have been me! See more photos

…scanned from my archive. My best friend for several summers was Amy Fonda, Henry Fonda’s daughter. We had a good time together, but she has a propensity for expressing her affection through biting, myself being the most convenient target for her oral expressiveness. Nonetheless, we had a good time making mud soup in my red flyer wagon and lolling around on our neighbor’s porch. I was developing a bad food allergy at the time to tree nuts, and had the misfortune to find out just how bad it was one day at Amy’s house, barfing up chunks of my Chunky bar all over his kitchen. The Fondas were very gracious about my unfortunate reaction and subsequent mess, but I don’t recall being invited back there after that. See more photos

…scanned from my archive. Fire Island Pines is all wooden boardwalks, no concrete at all. My friends, Scott, Jeannie and I decided to build our own boardwalk one day and got to work with our tool chest full of hammers and nails. I learned how to to build things from my Father whom I noticed after hammering a nail would yell “fuck!”, evidently a reaction from either hitting his finger, or just bending the nail as it went in. Not knowing the reasons for his expletives, I figured this is just how you do it, and would myself scream “fuck” after hitting every nail, causing much consternation amongst the neighbors and my friend’s parents. Out boardwalk to nowhere was eventually demolished as some people bought the lot it was on. Such is the way of gentrification. See more photos