Smile for the camera; the moment will last

On a recent morning, we hustled out the door and joined the line of people waiting for their appointments at a department store’s photo studio: a little boy in a bow tie, a family outfitted in matching red plaid pajamas, and a grandma on a motorized scooter inching along the hallway.

I was surprised to see such brisk trade. When I’d first tried to book an appointment online, I’d discovered the photo studio at Sears had been shuttered; its operator, CPI Corp., went bankrupt in 2013, reportedly fallen victim to changing times, failing to upgrade its facilities to meet the challenges and opportunities presented by digital technology.

With cameras on our phones, everyone’s a photographer, snapping endless candid shots in lieu of formal photos. I suspected the photo studio’s demise also came about because people are staying home to shop online rather than going into malls — particularly the indoor ones that I once roamed so avidly as a teenager but no longer frequented.

J.C. Penney, however, still had a studio, run by Lifetouch, a Minnesota firm that’s also cornered the market on school photos, IDs and church directories.

As my family made our way past the discounted racks of merchandise, and rode the escalator down to the studio, I remembered the last time we’d gathered for family photos at the end of 2011. For my husband and me, it had felt like a parenting rite of passage, to pose stiffly against the sort of backdrops we’d posed against ourselves as children — only now, we were the parents in the picture, three generations instead of just two.

My twin sons had been chubby infants, and during the shoot, we passed them around like accessories to my parents, who toddled them in their laps, and to my nephew, who sat cross-legged with them, his arms around them. None of us knew that my father would pass away half a year later, and that the photo session would be our last together.

I wished my father could have been with us still, could have seen who my sons are growing up to be, and could have celebrated many more dinners together.

The nine of us arrived with our hair blown out or slicked down, shirts tucked in and stomachs sucked in, in our most flattering finery. The night before, we’d considered matching outfits or color coordinating, but that seemed too complicated for us to pull off; other families have put in the effort, judging by the photos we spotted in the studio, including a black-and-white shot of four teenagers who wore turtlenecks and styled their hair in bowl cuts like the Beatles.

This time — like last time, and surely every time before that — the cheerful photographer put us through a series of poses, with my mother and her grandsons, my husband and our sons; my brother and his girlfriend; my nephew and our sons, and so on. Getting everyone together, smiling, looking at the camera, in unison seemed akin to a Jenga puzzle come to life, involving stools, a wooden sleigh and a short box to perch upon for those standing in the back row.

The box led to confusion by friends when they viewed the photos later, and marveled at how tall my 13-year-old nephew had become — taller than my husband and my brother!

“He’s on a box,” I explained.

In another shot, my brother perched on the box, looming over me and my sister. We posed backto-back, with our arms folded across our chests, while my brother cocked his hands on his hips. “You look like you just very smugly solved a crime,” a friend quipped.

Hua Family Detective agency, at your service! Still, I loved the photo. It made me think about the many times me and my siblings have been asked to smile for the camera over the decades, and all that we’ve been through together.

The photos weren’t artful or edgy or creative, but that wasn’t the point. I’m not even sure how many we will print out and frame, but I cherish the memory of the session, laughing and joking as we swapped places, chasing after the twins, shifting a few inches to the right and to the left, moving up, moving back.

It seems many of us have a certain nostalgia for these department store photos. On holiday trips to our parents’ house, we uncover evidence of our younger selves: our big hair and big glasses and questionable fashion choices from a bygone era. Looking at ourselves as children feels a bit like time travel: We glimpse the person we eventually became, and we glimpse the traits reborn in the next generation. Look at those cheeks — at that smile.

Today’s photos are already becoming yesterday’s.

The photo ... made me think about the many times me and my siblings have been asked to smile for the camera over the decades.