THE FAMILY PHOTO BOX

MOM & DAD

MOM & DAD

When my father transitioned in July of 2006 there was a family album that was up for grabs.  My two younger sisters weren’t the least bit interested in having it and I WAS.  The album contained

  1.  The honeymoon book of my maternal grandparents from 1913, including pencil scribbles that my mother added at a very early age.
  2. My parents honeymoon album from 1943, with my dad in Coast Guard uniform and all…
  3. It also contained professional photographs of my father Stanley Gould, who was a pioneer TV cameraman, first for WOR, NY then for CBS, NY, where he pioneered the first mini-cam, at the 1968 democratic convention in Chicago. He was an artist with his TV camera, had to learn how to take it apart and put if back together, and that went for the new color TV cameras that emerged in the early 60’s.

After perusing all the pictures I thought to myself, “WOW!  Mom (Zara) and Dad (Stan) were so beautiful!  If they stood next to Hollywood Icons of their era, no one would know they weren’t movie stars”.  The light bulb went off in my head.  “I’ll create photographic montages of them inserted into iconic classics and no one will know the difference.”  This became my legacy project to my father, who gave me many gifts;  the greatest one is how I see the world and see it through my camera lens.

Shooting iconic DVD movies on an analogue tv screen, what you see here is the result.  Photoshop and hours upon hours of graphically configuring where to place chosen images followed…

THE COLLECTION

The first one I created was GILDA (Tuxedo), with Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford.  Next was THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA  (Cradling the Child) with Ava Gardener, Humphrey Bogart and Rosanno Brazi.  HOUSE BOAT with Sophia Loren and Cary Grant (they really fell in love filming together and pretended the wedding scene was their wedding – alas – never to be in real life because Sophia could never leave her husband, Carlo Ponti).  JAILHOUSE ROCK (Rocker) with non other than Elvis (I actually saw that on in the movies!), TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD with Gregory Peck and Robert Duval in his first movie (Boo Radley character), DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK with Marilyn Munroe (her first leading role) and Richard Widmark and finally, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (Martians EEK!) with Michael Renee and Patricia Neal.

[SORRY THE CAROUSEL IS BROKEN.

YOU MUST CLICK ON EACH IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT,

THEN CLICK THE BACK ARROW TO BRING YOU BACK HERE TO VIEW MORE.]