Emma & The Healy Family

Family Portraits

Someone reached out online. They had a story and a specific place they needed to use.

Twenty years earlier, Emma used to bring her granddaughter Megan for ice cream at Taylor’s Ice Cream Parlor in Chester, New Jersey. Megan was around six. It was their summer routine, a grandmother and granddaughter thing, the kind of thing that becomes part of who you are to each other. Now Emma was 102 and Megan was grown, and the family wanted to go back to that same place for a portrait session with three generations. Because of what it meant. Not for any other reason.

Getting there took years. Hurricane Sandy came first and pushed everything back. Then the original location burned to the ground. That one was hard. It wasn’t just a location; it was the location.

Anthony reached out to the owners directly. They didn’t just agree; they were excited. On the day of the session, they made a cake for Emma. The owners’ family showed up too. There’s a photo with all of them.

Emma ordered vanilla in a sugar cone. Her thing. The camera caught three generations at the counter, laughter and ease between people who had nothing to perform. What you see in the images is what was actually there.

Anthony came to the house for the reveal, walked them through every frame, suggested a collage, and created a video they could share. Nancy later wrote that it got more reactions than anything she’d passed along in years.

Emma F. Spolizino was born July 10, 1912. She passed December 28, 2016. Her family chose the solo portrait from that afternoon, Emma alone, happy, caught mid-bite, as the image for her funeral and memorial page. They asked for Anthony’s video to play at the service.

Some photographs become more than photographs. This is what that looks like.

In Their Own Words