A Family Album
A Family Album
In 2019 I received a call that Curtis Lee Gary Sr., whom we all knew as Choo Choo, had passed away. I hurriedly scoured my film archive searching for all the photographs I had of him to send to his son Jeremy. The prints were later included in his funeral service and obituary card. I felt this to be the single most important contribution I had ever made in photography, a contribution to a son’s lasting memory of his father.
I've spent the past 11 years with the Coffey family in Duncan, Mississippi, being introduced to their neighbors, their friends, and their extended family scattered across the northern Mississippi Delta. I’ve watched newborns crawl toward taking their first steps, as their teenage cousins blossom into young adults. I’ve seen their parents grow older and their grandparents frailer. We’ve shared birthdays, holidays, and every regular old day in-between.
This is an abbreviated collection of the photographs we've taken over the years that I find in their homes. Some hang above the headboard of their bed. Others in living rooms mounted to wooden frames beneath a thin seal of epoxy. I find collections of them gently wrapped in tissue paper, preserved in a box in the corner of their closet, so the cigarette smoke doesn’t tarnish them. These images are the keepsakes.