“Ishi” – is 91.
Our society is weird, isn’t it? We celebrate our young children’s birthdays and milestones with such gusto but then, somewhere in our 20s, the enthusiasm sort of dies out and birthdays become (for most of us) pretty ho-hum affairs. This is reflected back at us through the photography world too: lots of weddings, babies, families with young children, and high school seniors. As mothers and fathers we are revered when we have young children, meanwhile older parents and grandparents… where are they in our photographic record? In the trillions of images shared on Instagram, blogs, and Facebook pages, the record seems eerily silent.
And man, this is a terrible shame. There is something so incredibly… almost… spiritual about spending time with someone who has experienced so much of life. The wisdom they have acquired, their unique take on life and, often, in the freedom from things like young children and 60 hour a week jobs, their sense of joy in the every day. This hit me like a brick as I watched my father pass recently, realizing with each precious day what I would be losing when he was no longer there to offer me advice or share the benefit of his experience.
So, when Susanne, Ishi’s daughter, contacted me looking for a photographer to capture her father at home in Long Beach, I immediately told her that, with a short flight, I would be there. Susanne also flew out from her east coast home to spend five days with her father, including the day of our shoot.
Here is what she told me about Ishi.
“My dad turns 91 years old today and still rides his 3-wheeled cycle (that he calls a “bicycle”) most every day. He spends most of his day sitting in his garage with the garage door rolled up so he can watch the cars and the people go by. He lives on a busy street and calls the garage his “office”; he even has chairs set up in there for himself and for visitors where, every morning, he smokes a cigar. My mom and dad’s families were both interned during World War Two, being of Japanese ancestry, and they met and married after the war in 1950. They had 5 children—four girls and a boy. When I was very little, my dad was a farmer in the Imperial Valley but we moved to Long Beach when I was 6 years old. For 35 years he owned an auto parts business in South Central L.A. but, unfortunately, it was burned down in the 1992 L.A. riots. My mom died 27 years ago, living one year after receiving a heart transplant at Stanford. She was only 60 when she died.”
When I met Ishi, he greeted me wearing a shirt that said “Old Guys Rule.” I think that says pretty much everything that needs to be said about him right there. Despite many of the setbacks he has had in life, he remains a very positive, open, and compassionate person. So often it’s easy to resort to negativity and anger when bad things happen or people you love are taken away from you; not the case with Ishi. He embraces his age and the lessons he has learned along the way. As a result, Ishi has so much to share with younger generations. As I was spending some time with him after our shoot, he took my hand, looked up at me from his chair and said: “You make everybody happy inside.” My eyes still well up with tears just recalling this moment and special connection. I will never forget his graciousness.
This session was made all the more special by my assistant – my own mom – who drove up from San Diego to deliver me to the shoot and help out. Mom has a natural gift for putting people at ease and we very quickly settled into our time with Ishi and Susanne.
It’s sessions like this that make my heart happy. My website says “Weddings & Life Milestones” for a reason: every age of our lives are precious and to be celebrated, and I am privileged to capture so many of them. I truly hope to receive the grace and wisdom of many other fathers and mothers and grandmas and grandpas. Who, in your family, has a great life story I can tell?
