Jieying Shao | Spoon
Information
94 22
Mar 2019
I found some film negatives of 25 years ago, which were filmed on February 2, 1994. To my surprise, I realized that they recorded my parents’ wedding when I re-scanned those negatives. The wedding was held in my father’s workplace and the photographer was a colleague of him. The ceremony was held in the conference room, which is really unusual but interesting by today’s view as most of the weddings nowadays are normally held in hotels.
Those photos probably were taken by compact cameras, so some of them are slightly underexposed. In some of the pictures the subjects are out of focus while the background is sharp. However, the sense of period was evoked intensely by these elements. There are even some photos of a work meeting held on the same day as the wedding. I also included them in the book and arranged the book in the order of the film, named it "94 2 2", just like the time stamp on the photo.
Before finding those negatives, I didn’t know February 2 was the anniversary day of my parents’ wedding, let alone 2019 is the 25nd one, the silver wedding. Then I realize that, this is exactly the beauty of photography: it will record some of the events that have happened, and then people will gradually forget about these things, but it is always there, waiting to be discovered again and retell the story to those who have never arrived in the past.
For my parents, they seldom celebrate anniversary, but that doesn’t mean they are not romantic or don’t love each other. They always support each other through ordinary life, which might be the best definition of happiness and romance.
As their daughter, I want to tell this story by editing those photos into a handmade book: February 2, 1994, when my parents got married, the firecrackers were hung on the grape vines. People were waiting the wedding car, inside which sat my parents, the newly married couple. Firecrackers would be crackling and spluttering as one of the most important customs in Chinese wedding celebration. My mother wore a beautiful, heavy vermeil wool coat and garlands of plastic flowers in her hair. My father, not to be outdone, was in a decent greenish grey two-piece suit with a very smart embroidered modena waistcoat. He even got a vintage bouffant hairdo and a moustache. It is quite easy to recognize the place where the wedding taken place. I used to live in the dormitory of my father’s workplace through my whole childhood. The faces appear in the photos are all familiar to me: my grandparents, aunts and uncles... watching them look much younger is just like an accidentally time travel for me.
This book is a gift for my parents’ silver wedding.
Sonder, magzine by Carolina Semprucci