Where the Time Goes

“This book would not exist if David hadn’t come so close to death. In December 2016 David was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of lymphoma. The oncologist gave him a thirty percent chance of survival. I didn’t expect him to live”. During the many months of David’s chemotherapy and radiation, Diane Jonte-Pace turned to a long-postponed project: arranging the unlabeled and unsorted photographs, stored in shoeboxes throughout the house, that she and her husband, photographer David Pace, had taken during the five decades of their relationship. Organizing prints and slides dating from the early 1970s when the couple first met, provided an opportunity to reflect on their shared past and to grieve or mourn the losses they expected. The project led to the collection of the photographs in this book, weaving a story of aging and change, love and hope.

Technically and stylistically, this book incorporates most of the forms of photography available over the last five decades: 35mm single-lens reflex cameras, Brownie Hawkeyes, Polaroids and single-use throw-away cameras, professional cameras like the Pentax 6×7, Sinar 4×5, Deardorff 8×10, full frame digital Canons, and, more recently, iPhones.

The story told by these photographs belongs not only to Diane and David. It provides a window onto the past for an entire generation. “Where the Time Goes” recounts how the post-war generation turned the camera upon itself, and narrates a story of youth, aging, and change through illness, hope, and recovery.