* “From your sister Sasha. Brother, may this inanimate image save a lively memory about me. Photograph of the student year 1944.”
(usually my brother), who was lying on the ground, because this would cause the person to stop growing. Standing in this position over my mother, my father seems to try not only to freeze her in a photograph but also in reality. Is the photograph an excuse for this action, to make this saying come true? I am no longer looking at my mother, but at my father and how he is looking at her. I am looking at his attempt to save her beauty, her love and even her gaze. I remember my father showing me a photograph he had inherited from his uncle that shows the portrait of my grandmother as a student. It is a small image, maybe 3"× 2" with a full-length fold. My grandmother had a couple of siblings. During WWII she gave this photograph to her favorite brother with an inscription on the back: “From your sister Sasha. Brother, may this inanimate image save a lively memory about me. Photograph of the student year 1944.” Her brother died on the last day of war, getting out of a tank. He had this image in his breast pocket and when he got shot, he fell on the edge of the tank, leaving this fold and a few blood stains on the image. Over the course of time, the image began to lose contrast, but the few blood stains still seem as vivid as if he had just been shot recently. In the hands of my father the words of my grandmother gain a whole new meaning and truth. In a mysterious way her wish not to be forgotten came true. 71