Cardinal Sigitas TamkevičiusLithuanian Cardinal, Former Soviet Prisoner of Conscience & Champion of Religious Freedom

#SelfMade Derek Pfohl Wix Stories

Name: #SelfMade Derek Pfohl Wix Stories
Uploaded: 2015-12-07T14:41:06+00:00
Duration: 1 min 3 s
Channel: Cardinal Sigitas Tamkevičius
Description: In this personal monologue, Derek Pfohl reflects on how photography serves as a medium for preserving memories and evoking experiences, even for those…

7 Dec 2015 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:03

In this personal monologue, Derek Pfohl reflects on how photography serves as a medium for preserving memories and evoking experiences, even for those who have never lived them. He recounts his upbringing in Syracuse, New York, where his family would close their business each summer to live on a boat for three months, creating vivid, pre‑social‑media memories that he keeps close through photographs. He then contrasts this with his immersion in the restaurant industry, describing it as an "eye‑opening" and almost genetic part of his identity—what he calls "restaurant blood"—that shapes his worldview and daily life. The narrative weaves together themes of memory, place, and occupational identity, illustrating how these disparate experiences inform his personal philosophy.

Chapters

A photograph is one of those only mediums where even if you've never experienced that situation or that place or whatever it is, you can look at the photograph and almost have a sense of what it would be like to be there. So I was born in Syracuse, New York, four months of the year during the summer, my parents would actually close our family business and we would go and live on the boat for three months. You know, it's this thing before social media, before the Internet, that we just had to remember and to keep those memories really close and keep our connections with people, even though they may not be in our lives anymore. The idea of photography and the idea of working in the restaurant business to me were very different things. Quite an eye opening experience, I guess would be the best way to say it. And it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. You know, it was just so easy and so natural. And it was, you know, I just have that restaurant blood, you know, that just way of life that only restaurant workers would know. It doesn't get much more close to home than that.