Exist In Photographs

When your children go looking for photographs of you, what will they find?

Outdated technology that holds decades of memories? Cloud services with passwords they don't know? We have generations of memories and images lost with the rapid movement of technology that promises to be more reliable than the previous version you bought. Images that can only be loved and enjoyed if you have a battery that's charged and the password that gets you in.

The other day, I opened a trunk full of old photographs. Beginning with daguerreotypes, carte de visites, ferrotypes, postcards, all the way up to old black and whites, and blurry aged Polaroids. Generations of my family lovingly collected and noted. Names and dates of family vacations, graduations, family coming together from long distances that may not see each other for years to come. There was a trail of images documenting my great aunt Jessie and those that were precious to her. Images of her parents on their wedding day, her as an infant sitting in her mother's lap, as an older sister to a growing family of siblings, her graduation day, her first image as a nurse and public healthcare worker, family vacations to see her sister in England...her collection of memories preserved in photographs. Photos of my mom, my aunts and uncles, my mom on her wedding day, and way at the bottom, a photo of toddler me with my dad.

It is an emotional experience to see photographically where I came from. A legacy of women and men I've only heard about in story form. Now, I add to that legacy the photos of my daughters, sons, and me.

Not only is it important to exist in photographs, but also to have them printed!

#existinphotographs #printyourimages