I went to get a closer look. They were a lot younger in these pictures. Grandpa looked even younger than my dad, and Joan’s hair was in a sixties-style flip in a few.

“Did you take all these?” I asked.

“No, but I took most of them.” She came to stand beside me. “That’s your grandpa in college, around when we first met. That’s just a snapshot. I didn’t really take up photography until after your dad and Tammy were born.” She moved to a section of the wall by the door and pointed to a photo of Grandpa in which he was partially framed by an open doorway. “This is Russ in Boulder, at his office. 1972. One of the first pictures I made with my Rolleiflex.”

This photo did look different from the earlier ones. It was somehow both more composed and more spontaneous. I realized the photos must be in chronological order, because my grandparents got younger as I moved to the left. I stopped at a picture of a nude woman lying on the floor, her body covered in streaks of dark paint. I looked closer; her face looked familiar.

“That’s me in the sixties,” Joan said. “I was living in New York then, and one of my friends recruited me to help with a performance art piece. He had me cover myself in paint and roll around on a canvas.” Joan shrugged. “It was pretty derivative, but the photos were interesting. That’s probably when I first became interested in photography.” She gave me a sly look. “My parents were scandalized. They thought I went to art school to paint nice little pictures of fruit.”

I couldn’t imagine her painting nice pictures of fruit, but seeing her in this nude photo—even if it was art—was just as weird. She saw the expression on my face and laughed.

“I was only involved in those performances a few times. Then I got married to Russ and we moved to Cornell—he had a postdoc there for a few years.” She went to a photo of herself and Grandpa standing on a bridge, his arm around her. In the picture she had one hand extended as if to direct whoever the photographer was, and now she reached out and touched her image with a fingertip. “This is from Cornell. I was painting abstracts then, but once I had your dad and Tammy, I didn’t have enough time for that. I could take pictures, though, and develop them when the kids were asleep. By the time they were old enough that I could get back to painting, the art world had changed. I changed.” She went back to the stool and sat down again. She seemed a little tired. “Everything changes. That’s unavoidable. I know you don’t like the way your summer plans changed—”

“It’s fine,” I said quickly, but she held up her hand.