Me Being Me

I haven't changed a bit

Aged 1 in 1960, and 60 in 2019

Recreating old photos is a great way to practice costuming and body postures in staged self-portraits. Mom or Dad took the picture of Toddler Cindy playing inside a box back in 1960. To recreate it, I went to Goodwill and found a blouse with puffy sleeves in a color that (to my untrained eye) might look the same as the original in a black and white photograph. I put on dark pants and white shoes, without the little jingle bells like my original walking shoes. That delightful detail wouldn’t show and only I knew they were they on the original shoes.

I found a big box almost exactly the right size to sit in. It was a tad narrow so my adult knee stuck out, unlike my toddler knee. My adult shoulder was pressed against the side of the box, making it bow out just a little. Close enough for practice.

After 10 tries, adjusting my tongue, eyes, hands and feet between each shot, I got the pose above.

Also in 2019, I tried recreating a school picture from 2nd grade:

Aged 7 and 60

Parents in the 1960’s were notoriously bad at cutting bangs on their daughters. So uneven! I took the scissors to my own hair to cut bangs for this shot. Gloriously uneven without even trying. Perfect! I made a few practice faces in the mirror to get my smile to show those same dimples, and juuust cover the edges of my top teeth with my bottom lip. My real glasses were not quite the pointy kind popular at the time but pretty close. I’m no longer blonde but I’ve never dyed my hair and am not about to just to take a picture. Brown is fine and the pigtails are cute.

I wasn’t good enough at Photoshop back in 2019 to better match the rosy cheeks and the yellow background. Life is hard and that rosy glow has faded.

Maybe when I’m 90 I’ll add a third picture to this recreation!