Leave it to Leonor #126

This week, I am thinking about The Compound. The Compound is how I refer to the two apartments, which I called home for my entire childhood, through college and part of my early twenties. They are side by side on the same floor in the same building.

In 1963, my grandfather, Jorge, immigrated here from Ecuador. He first moved into a small apartment across the street from The Compound and for the next five years he worked and slowly brought over his family. First his wife, Aida, and middle daughter, Sandra, then a few years later, his eldest two children, Leonor (my mom) and Elena. By 1971, he and my grandma had two more kids. Eventually, a huge pre-war apartment opened up across the street. It was twice the price of the apartment they lived in, but with five children, my grandfather considered it worth the risk. So in 1979, they moved into apartment C2. A year or so later, my parents moved into apartment C3.  

Fast forward to 2017, my frequent creative partner in crime and work husband, Josef was talking to me about an idea he had for a project. It sparked an idea that led to another idea which led to my final idea. A photo book of the apartment over the last 40 years. For the next 15-ish months, I pillaged photo albums, frames, online albums and boxes crammed with photos. I went against my photo editor instincts and pulled anything that showed the apartment, not necessarily "good" photos. A few months in, I was completely and utterly overwhelmed by the amount of content I'd amassed. Turns out we are a family of documentarians. My next step was scanning. So much scanning, I had to do it in batches to avoid losing my mind. (Yes, I know there are services that could've handled the scanning but I couldn't risk everyone's pictures getting lost). The old school photo editor in me wanted to print out minis and make boards, but I quickly realized that there was no way I'd be able to without a loft-sized studio. Josef and I frequently joked that we'd end up like this: 

How do you find an organizing method for 40 years of content? I started separating the newly scanned photos into their appropriate rooms. Patterns began to emerge as I sorted and I made sub-folders: dogs, events, certain walls and corners and windows. There were images decades apart that echoed each other that needed to find their way in there. I was completely overwhelmed. 

Luckily, Josef was on board to design the book (as I kept reminding him, it was really all his fault). I sent him a general sense of how I wanted it to be organized and, like he always does, he created an elegant and sophisticated design. 

The book came in at nearly 50 pages (with unlimited funds and more time, it could've been 100). Everyone got a copy for Christmas. There were tears and exclamations and shockingly few corrections, although I'm giving it time. There are, of course, a few things I would go back and tweak now, but that's the perfectionist streak that I am forever trying to suppress. 

The cover has colors inspired by the Ecuadorian flag. Note: the cover has been slightly altered to remove some personal family info, which is why you don't see the blue.