Dad's Duet (Digitally Modified Snapshot)

Dad's Duet (Digitally Modified Snapshot)
Originally uploaded by randubnick

This image began as snapshot given to me by one of my aunts, several years after my dad died. My dad is the boy on the right, with the dark slacks. Yesterday, I used Painter's digital airbrush to add color to the image, and then I posterized it and cropped it to get this image. I don't know if this is on a ferry boat, or just near the beach, maybe somewhere near Brooklyn. The writing on the back of the snapshot says "Hy and Eddie Cohen, 1939". Usually, I try to get permission before posting images of people, but in this case, I have no idea how to find my dad's friend. (Eddie Cohen is a very common name.) So instead, I added extra posterizing to Eddie's face, to make the image less recognizable. I briefly considered cropping and modifying the image to show only my dad, but he was friendly and generous and big on duets. When I was growing up, my dad and mom were always playing piano together, and as I studied piano, he even played duets with me. (In any duet, he was always the better musician, even though he couldn't read music.) Despite years of piano lessons, I am not a musician, not even close. But this image is a different kind of duet, a visual collaboration with the unknown photographer who took this picture. I am posting this visual duet today because my dad was born on August 28, 1918.