Out of the Basement:Working with the archive of our father’s photography.

While researching and writing my one-woman show, Nightcleaning, I rediscovered the amateur photography collection of my father, Willis Laughlin, who died in 1978. I was intrigued by the life in his photos; the way he captured women and children and men in the early 1960s.

Like many older collections, they were trapped in slides. Like many families, our numbers have dwindled. We used to be 6. Now we are 3. Tick tock, tick tock. My siblings and I thought it was time to share his work.

 —Denise Laughlin Stewart