“Why are you using old film to take pictures of yourself?” my friends ask when I tell them about this project — a series of self portraits made using expired film.

“It just seems right for someone who’s coming up on his own sell-by date,” I joke.

But there is something else beneath the humor. Aging is no longer a far-off destination. My parents are gone. My knees don’t work like they used to. I write notes to myself — reminders of the simplest things. And my daydreams wander into the past more often than they imagine the future. Amid the losses, however, I also find moments of ease, sensuality, even delight.

What to make of it all? While my project started with self portraits, it expanded to include my marriage, the land where I live, who I am now, and where I have been; a self portrait writ large. A visual memoir.

I expected expired film to produce indistinct images, full of artifacts, but much of it holds up surprisingly well. Evidence, perhaps, that even old things remain vital, able to grant us meaning, and grace.