Difficult theme, as I have a great many photos I'm very fond of, but I'm going to go with one I've already uploaded- I put this one up here on WikiTree a couple weeks back when we had the question about artists for the question of the week, but I want to repost it, because it's my favorite photo of my grandfather, who I've been posting a lot of photos of, because he passed away last November. I learnt just this morning of yet another death in my extended family, the fifth in the past year, & I've been making a point of collecting photos for each of those people. Of all of them, my grandfather was the man I was closest to, & I intend to continue working on improving his profile & documenting his life.
As labeled, this was taken September 1968; at the time, William A. Koehnline was serving as the Dean of Instruction at Harrisburg Area Community College in Harrisburg, PA, & this was about a year before he was offered the job of President of the new Oakton Community College in Morton Grove, IL. My grandfather had a lifelong love of art, having been introduced to great works of the visual, musical & literary by his mother, & to certain movements of the art world, especially the surrealists, by his father's sisters: all in all, four women who greatly shaped his character. He wasn't much of an artist in his youth, but beginning in the '60s he started creating many of these fantastical & surreal sculptures of cardboard & other materials he could get his hands on, such as the one displayed here. I've always loved this photo just because of how goofy & joyful he looks in it; I wish I'd known him then.