Today’s prompt: Write about a photograph you remember, even if you don’t have it anymore.
While I was an exchange student in Finland, I took a photography course, figuring it was something I could do to communicate with people without having to speak Finnish, a difficult language to learn, especially when you don’t want to. I bought an SLR and started walking around taking pictures instead of going to class.
My first host family lived in Kaarina, Finland, a town about 12 km outside of Turku. There was a field with a small wooded area down a path not far from the house, where I used to go for walks. After some tall grass, but before the trees, there was a small clearing where people would park their boats. It seemed like the strangest thing to me at the time.
I distinctly remember taking a picture of the boats covered with snow in this dry marina. My unceasing melancholy made it feel poignant. I was expressing something about myself and where I was in my life.
Part of the course had us developing our own photos. That was one of them. There was another of a retaining wall in the shape of a scythe that a classmate saw something in.
I think I put it between the covers of a photography book I accidentally took from one of my classmates in the photography class. I have a feeling I lent the book to someone during first year university. One day, I had neither the photo or the book nor any idea of where they might be.
I don’t know where the negatives are, either.
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