Our Family Photo Wall

The big project I worked on last summer was creating a family photo wall.  My mother has one in her house which is a wall dedicated to photos of our family's ancestors.  Her wall is a mishmash of original photos in a variety of sizes in all sorts of frames.  It does not include everyone but instead it is a collection of photos that she had which she hung on a dedicated wall in the family room.

I have wanted to do the same thing in our house for about a year now.  I decided to bite the bullet and do it last summer before my cousins from Italy came to stay with us for 2 weeks.  I thought it would be a nice thing for them to see, which motivated me to get it done.

Just figuring out how to tackle the project took a few days.  Although I had some original photos, most were scanned images that I would resize and print from Photoshop.  This was good in that it gave me flexibility for size, but bad in that I had to make the photos a correct size to fit the frames while keeping the proper proportions.  Other things to consider were:  Would I use the same size frames?    Same color?  How would I deal with vertical vs. horizontal shots?  How large would the finished project be?  Would I include our children or just our ancestors?  How would I balance Chris' family shots with my family's?  There were so many factors to consider.

Our family room sports a 6-foot pool table, which was the perfect size to organize the layout of the photos.  I decided to use all black wooden frames but with a combination of sizes including 4 x 6, 5 x 7, and 8 x 10.  I also bought 3 collage frames that were made up of 4 frames-in-one. 

I decided that in the center of the wall, I would put our wedding photo, which would be the most recent photo and the merging point for the ancestors of both families.  To the left would be my family and to the right would be Chris' family.  If I had gone to the next generation of our kids, the photos would be endless.  Besides, I have a million photos of the kids already organized into albums, so the need to have them on the wall was not why I was doing this.  The goal was to hang our ancestors to view, remember, and talk about.  As photos radiated out from our wedding photo, the relatives got older.  We were able to go as far as all Chris’ and my great-grandparents.

Day after day I worked on trying to select the best photo of this grandma or that uncle…trying not to forget a relative…working on balancing the vertical and horizontal shots.  I wanted the finished wall to look like a collage and not a boring pattern of a row of horizontals followed by a row of verticals.  I also made sure to thoroughly label all the photos before inserting them into their new home. 

There was a lot of re-printing of the shots, tweaking the size to better fit the frame or adjusting the color or contrast.  Soon the finished ‘rough draft’ was laid out on our pool table.  When all was said and done we had painstakingly narrowed it down to 54 photos.  The realization then set in that if we were accurate, we were going to have to create that many holes in the wall.  If we were not accurate, that number would climb.  It didn’t bother me so much though.  My rationalization was that when we go to sell our house in a zillion years, we would take our photos down and patch up the wall.  No biggie. 

So hanging day arrived and we took a photo of the perfect arrangement on the pool table and tried our best to replicate that as we painstakingly hung them one by one.  I added a spot of Velcro to the bottom of each frame securing them to the wall so they wouldn’t tip off center.  That would be a nightmare for anyone with OCD.

We reveled in our finished masterpiece.  When anyone came over, we greeted him or her with, “How are you?  What?  You haven’t seen our photo wall yet?  Well, come take a peek…” 

The one thing I hadn’t thought of though, was adding all those frames to my list of items to dust. 

No, this is not Little Bo Peep and her sister.  It is my grandmother Blanche and her sister Dolly.  Destination unknown.

My great Uncle Oreste from Italy who fought in WWI for American after moving here.

 My grandpa Sam who was a mounted policeman in New York City.

My dad and his sister Gloria.  Be honest, doesn't dad look a little like Alfalfa from the Little Racals?

My grandpa Sam as a baby with his brother William.

My mother's high school graduation photo

One set of great grandparents on their wedding day

My father on his confirmation day with my great Uncle Al.  Now, you can't deny Alfalfa here...

My dad as a baby with his mom, my grandma Blanche

Atlantic City Boardwalk in the 70s...me and my siblings

One Christmas in the 60s.  I am on the far left

My great grandma Concetta with her second husband (first husband died very young)

My communion day with one set of grandparents

Ok, this is a sampling of some of the photos on the wall.  Do you have any memories of old photos you want to share?