{"id":42369,"date":"2024-09-21T00:04:49","date_gmt":"2024-09-21T07:04:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=42369"},"modified":"2026-06-05T10:02:45","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T10:02:45","slug":"photos-that-bring-my-husband-back-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/photos-that-bring-my-husband-back-to-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Photos That Bring My Husband Back to Life. And One That Doesn’t"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"photos<\/a>
This is one of the candid photos that bring my husband back to life for me. During a 2011 trip to Michigan, I grabbed a shot of him waiting for our plane. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Earlier this week I came across a photo of Jon as he sat in an airport reading a newspaper, waiting for a plane.<\/p>\n

The photo was so lifelike, so like Jon, that I burst into tears when I spotted it. There was Jon, right in front of me, in all his ineffable Jon Newhall-ness.<\/p>\n

It was a sad moment, but sweet. Sweet because, for a sliver of time I had Jon with me again.<\/p>\n

There he was — Jon being Jon: reading a newspaper, rolling his upper lip over his lower lip, deep in thought.<\/p>\n

My husband was dressed, as usual, in khaki Dockers, which I’d probably bought for him at Macy’s. I’d go there every December, just before Christmas, to lift and move and tug at piles and piles of Dockers in hopes of finding some khakis, no pleats, in Jon’s quirky, hard-to-find size, 32×30.<\/p>\n

\"photos<\/a>
Jon took a nap and I was there to catch it with my camera. I am shameless in my habit of taking candid shots of friends and family. For years, Jon was a favorite subject, mostly because he was always there. In this photo, it’s the way Jon holds his hands that is hauntingly familiar. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Photos That Bring My Husband Back to Life<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Over the years, I took numerous candid shots of Jon like that one at the airport.<\/p>\n

Numerous because Jon was always so handily there and unperturbed by my camera. And candid because of what I learned from the news photographers I’d worked with as a journalist: Keep posed photos to a minimum. Get shots of people doing what they naturally do.<\/p>\n

During my early years with Jon — before children — I had time to make pen and ink sketches of my husband. I actually have one, made during our first, besotted year of marriage, of Jon flossing his teeth.<\/p>\n

\"jon-and-barbara-newhall-2017-asgeir-photo\"<\/a>
This is a lovely formal portrait of Jon and me, taken at our daughter’s wedding in 2016. We looked good — but is that really us? Asgeir photo<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Looking at the Camera<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The same day I came across the 2011 photo of Jon at the airport, I found another of him in London, looking straight into the camera, the Eye Ferris wheel artfully posed behind him.<\/p>\n

That Eye shot brings back nice memories of our trip to London. But it doesn’t bring back Jon.<\/p>\n

The same goes for a professional photo taken of the two of us at our daughter’s wedding.<\/p>\n

Neither of those photos of Jon is a photo of Jon<\/em>. They are photos of the face that Jon would put on for the camera. A nice face. A friendly face. And, let’s be clear, a handsome face.<\/p>\n

But that face is not really Jon. It cannot resurrect him for me — unlike the face I caught reading a newspaper in an airport in 2011.<\/p>\n

Read about what I saw when I encountered my deceased husband in a photo a year ago at, “I Said Hello to My Deceased Husband — Finally.”<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0And for the story behind family portrait-making at our house, go to “The Truth Behind That Happy Family Photo We Just Sent You.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"photos<\/a>
Taken of Jon in Michigan in 2011, this is one of the many photos that bring my husband back to life for me. When I look at it, I feel loved. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"photos<\/a><\/p>\n

Now and then I come across a photo that brings my husband back to life, and for one sweet moment, Jon is there in all his ineffable Jon-ness.\u00a0 Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48686,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[2900,187,34,191,29,671,689,32,2901,2419],"class_list":["post-42369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-widowed","tag-candid-photos","tag-death","tag-dont-miss","tag-grief","tag-jon","tag-journalism","tag-marriage","tag-photography","tag-photos","tag-widowed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42369"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48691,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42369\/revisions\/48691"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}