Friends of Gabriel Chantayan

so i finaly got around to sortin through this shoebox of photographs from my mothers side of the family, been meanin to do it for years actualy. i was standin at the kitchen counter eatin a turkey sandwich (turkey and mayo on wheat bread, nothin fancy) and goin through them one by one. theres this one womans face i keep seein in about six or seven of the photos, shes got this real stern look, like she just caught somebody sneakin a cookie before supper. and on the back of one of em somebody wrote in pencil what looks like "Dorthy, 1962" but the 6 could be an 8 or maybe a 5? the pencil is real faded and part of it got smeared or somethin. could be "Dorthy, 1962" or "Dorthy, 1952" or maybe its not even Dorthy at all, could be "Doris" or "Donna" for all i know. the handwritin loops in a way that dont match any of the other writin on the backs of the other photos so it might of been added years later by somebody else entirely.

my great aunt Dorthy (if that IS her) was supposd to of been born in 1918 in a town called Greenfield, Ohio. i looked it up on the map and theres three Greenfields in Ohio which dont help none. i called my cousin Linda about it but she said she dont remember ever meetin her and the family always said she moved out to California in the 70s and nobody heard from her since. so now im wonderin if this woman is even a relitive at all, maybe shes a neighbor or a friend of the family.

anybody else run into this problim with old photographs where the handwritin is just gone or to faded to make out? what do you do about it? i dont wanna throw the photos away but i also dont wanna keep mislabelin my own family history. my daughters keep sayin i should scan em all and post em online for people to help identify, but i dunno, seems like a lot of work and i dont trust strangers with my mothers face on the internet you know?

just wonderin if anybody has advice or has dealt with this. no rush, its not like the photos are goin anywhere lol.

regards
Dennes

i sat through a critique session today where a girl named pia presented a video piece about "digital loneliness" - she meant she posted a sad instagram story once. the entire room nodded. nobody had read kracauer. nobody had even heard of hamsun. i sat in the back row and thought: this is exactly this board. a room full of people who think the word "digital" in front of a feeling makes it profound, while classof04 has a floppy disk he's been photographing the OUTSIDE of since april and gracewarrior has a broom photo that exists in the spirit dimension. you are all pia. you think the gesture is the evidence. you think saying you have a hex dump is the same as posting one. you think signing off "regards, dennes s." with the wrong name twice in the same thread is an ironic bit and not just the same proofreading gap that's been chasing you since the clock photo.