Kodak Carousel

Memories of Dad's Slide Projector
The distinctive sound of a slide clicking into place, the gentle hum of the cooling fan, and the warm light projecting against the white wall. These sounds and impressions transport me back to our childhood living room, where Dad would prepare the evening's "show" with ritualistic precision.
The Magic of Ritual
I remember how Dad would start by drawing the curtains, turning off the lights, and setting up the heavy slide projector on the living room table. It was almost like preparing a home cinema. We kids would gather on the sofa, Mom would settle into her armchair, and Dad would take his position by the projector with the remote control in hand. In the beginning, it was magical. The first time I saw our own home projected large-scale on the wall, I felt a strange fascination. There I was, but bigger than reality, frozen in a moment from last summer or the Christmas before. It was like looking into a parallel world where everyone was a little more dramatic, a little more colorful.
When the Magic Faded
But like so many childhood rituals, the experience changed over the years. What had once been exciting gradually became a duty. "We're looking at pictures tonight," Dad would say, and we knew it meant an hour or two of sitting still while he methodically went through every slide from the latest vacation. I remember inwardly groaning when he started setting up the projector. How my siblings and I would exchange knowing glances when Dad showed the same picture of that church in Spain for the third time. "Look here, see how the light falls across the facade?" he'd say enthusiastically, while we kids just saw another building among all the others. The worst was when he got stuck on technical details. "I took this picture with aperture 8 and shutter speed 1/125..." The words flowed over us like a foreign language. We just wanted it to end, to be allowed to go play instead.
The Rediscovery
Now, many years later, I understand what Dad was really doing during those evenings. He wasn't just sharing pictures – he was sharing memories, stories, his own sense of wonder about the world. Each slide was a portal to a moment he had chosen to preserve, to make permanent. I think about this now when I scroll through thousands of digital images on my phone. How easy it is to take a picture today, and how rarely we actually stop to really look at them. Dad's slides required planning, development, selection. Each image had gone through a process that made it valuable.
Light and Shadows
There was something almost sacred about the entire procedure. The room transformed from ordinary to magical in the darkness, and each image bathed in the warm light from the projector. Colors became intense in a way that today's screens can never recreate. There was a physical presence in the images – light actually traveled from the projector, bounced off the wall, and returned to our eyes. I remember the smell of the warm projector, the sound of slides falling into the magazine after being shown, and the feeling of being together in the darkness, all facing the same point on the wall. It was a shared experience in a way that feels almost foreign today, when we all look at our own screens.
Today
I understand Dad's desperation to preserve and share these moments. I see how he struggled against the passage of time, how he wanted us to remember, to understand that these ordinary moments were valuable. Dad's slide projector now sits up in the attic, probably with some boxes full of slides beside it. I should take it down, digitize the images, but part of me wants to let them rest there. They belong to another time, another rhythm. They were meant to be shown in dark rooms, with the whole family gathered, with time to really see. Maybe that's what I miss most – not the pictures themselves, but that forced stillness. The time we were compelled to take, the attention we were compelled to give. In our world of constant stimulation and quick impressions, there was something liberating about being "trapped" in the darkness with Dad's stories. Now I understand it was never about the pictures. It was about Dad wanting us to see the world through his eyes, to share his sense of wonder. And even though we as children didn't always appreciate it, he was building something bigger – he was building family stories, shared reference points, a sense of continuity. Those evenings with the slide projector were Dad's way of saying: "This is important. This is worth remembering. We are worth remembering."
_{by Ola Lundström 2024}