Paradise in Color by Aline Smithson

Issue 19

Every summer, my family and I travel to a beautiful lake south of Boston, not far from the Cape, to dip our feet in ancestral waters. My husband’s great grandparents built homes on this lake over a century ago, and little has changed since then. For almost two decades, we’ve packed up our expectations and headed east to layer new memories onto the old.

There is something magical knowing that a hundred years later, we are taking pleasure in the same activities, swimming in the same water, running up and down the same stairways, and enjoying the same vistas from a house that has the traces of each preceding generation.

When I first started to photograph the lake many years ago, I worked exclusively in black and white. The limited palette seemed to echo the ancient family photos that lined the walls and bring sense of history to the work, but recently, when I started working in color, I felt a sense of renewal that brought our activities into the now. No matter how I capture this annual experience, it remains a magical corner of the world that I pack in my heart each time I leave. It is my paradise.

Aline Smithson is a Los Angeles, CA based photographer and teacher.
To view more of Aline's work, please visit her website and blog.