Photo Album: Record Autumn 2025 With Camera

As the October morning light slanted into the kitchen, I was adding a spoonful of maple syrup to my tea. The sugar maple tree outside the window was the first to sense the changing seasons—its leaves were just beginning to take on a caramel-colored rim, reminiscent of the yellowed edges of the photos in my grandmother's old album.

This autumn, I decided to start collecting things with my camera.

The first thing to go into the album was the mountain of pumpkins at the local farmers' market. An elderly white man in a camel-colored sweater handed a striped pumpkin to a little girl on tiptoe, the sunlight glazing both them and the pumpkin a honeyed hue. It reminded me of the pot of marigolds my mother kept on the windowsill of our Brooklyn apartment during my childhood—the same rich orange, the same stubborn determination to prove the possibility of growth in the cracks of the city.

My camera gradually developed its own preferences. It's fallen in love with the brick wall I pass on my daily walk—the creeper is smudged with shades of red, from burgundy to crimson, like the gradation of a singer's voice in a jazz bar. Last Wednesday, I captured the first falling sycamore leaf. It landed right next to a mural reading "Black Lives Matter," its bright yellow leaves covering the mottled blue letters. At that moment, I clicked the shutter, remembering us singing hand in hand here this spring. The colors of struggle fade, but something always returns in another form, just like this fallen leaf, about to transform into spring mud protecting the flowers.

On Thanksgiving Eve, a most special page appeared in my photo album. I set up my camera in the corner of the kitchen and captured the three of us Black women dancing at the stove, each wearing exquisite glueless lace wigs made from Burmese curly bundles—my aunt stirring the sweet potato filling, my cousin checking the oven, and me spreading marshmallows on a sweet potato pie. Steam blurred the camera lens, and our laughter was richer than any seasoning. These recipes traveled north along the Underground Railroad, stopping in my grandmother's Alabama kitchen before finally arriving in my Ohio kitchen, scented with lavender. Food is a living album, each bite an embrace across time and space.

On the nights I sort through the album, I write scattered lines of poetry next to the photos. Beneath the ginkgo leaf that fell on the steps, I wrote: "Your falling is not a fall, but a different kind of flight." Next to the photo of college students jogging in the morning, I copied the words of Audre Lorde: "When I dare to be strong, I dare to live my true self—not for the acceptance of others, but for my whole self."

Yesterday evening, I captured the most precious moment of this autumn: an elderly Chinese neighbor teaching me to prune a maple tree. Her hands intertwined with mine in the frame, our dark and light brown complexions, combined with the vibrant maple leaves of the forest behind us, formed the warmest hues of this autumn.

When the last sycamore leaf landed in the album, I gently closed the leather cover. Not a single photo in this album is simply a beautiful sight—the veins of every fallen leaf carry the memory of the Mississippi River, and every sunset reflects the journey we continue on. In the autumn of 2025, what I collect isn't a season, but rather a glittering slice of life salvaged by an African American woman from the river of time—so real, so vivid, like the spoonful of maple syrup melting in my tea, sweet yet with a hint of bitterness, just like life itself.