Double Take
Portraits Over Time
- 2014 INDIES Winner
- Silver, Photography (Adult Nonfiction)
“I love this job,” wrote Maggie Silverstein, the former editor of Tropic, the Miami Herald’s Sunday magazine, almost twenty years after she had set up her shop as a black-and-white portrait photographer. Her love is palpable in this collection of images that express what she calls the “combustible feeling of joy and sadness, longing and relief” that we “all feel when touched by the trajectory of our children’s lives.”
Silverstein’s artistic time-travel takes photographs of children, alone or with their siblings or parents, and sets them next to an image taken at a later date. In them we see the ways in which they’ve changed, yet also revealed are the selves they’ve always been. And while a gesture, the way an eyebrow arches, or a particular slant to a smile may persevere, what’s really moving is to see how the love between family members, which Silverstein captures in all its immediacy, intimacy, and strength, outlives the passage of time. In brief comments, parents, or the children themselves, now grown, share what they see as they look at the images, often revealing that, even when small, they’d had an intuitive understanding of what they were all about.
Though not of ourselves or our own children, these powerful yet sensitive portraits still pull at the heart, reminding us that it all goes by so very fast.
Reviewed by
Kristine Morris
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
