Yesterday we went to David’s parents’ house for the New Year. His parents are having some kind of discussion with each other about whether they should move from their house, and as part of this, perhaps, his mother had gone through all the drawers in the house and collected orphaned old photographs, which she had boxed and put in the basement. David’s family’s pictures are really wonderful, much better, I think, than an average box of photos, much more interesting, certainly, than my family’s photographic odds and ends, whose pleasure is personal. David’s family’s photos are snapshots, mostly badly taken, but the people in them are iconic, and they stand, as far as I can tell, in front of movie backdrops. If they are somewhere warm, there are palm trees behind them. Apart from the pictures I saved of David when he looked like John, I saved a picture of David’s grandfather in front of a waterfall, holding a newspaper, and one of his parents wearing mustaches. His father on the ground, while David slept in the vee of his legs. His mother, young and formal, posing by a formal painting of another young girl.

Now they’re mine. I had to think of Max Dean’s As Yet Untitled, a robot that removes snapshots from a box and shreds them, unless you save them by putting your hands on the machine. When I saw the work I was impressed by the amount of guilt it was able to produce in its viewer, who had to leave it with the knowledge that there would be snapshots she couldn’t save. But now, going through snapshots, I found myself disappointed with Dean's piece. It doesn't seem to contemplate the fact that the play it acts out is universal, ongoing, and inevitable. Nothing stops it. Certainly not my hands on the machine.