I love looking through the photo archives. Photographs, to me, are a record. They show me how things were “way back then”.
Lately I have been wondering what are the new photographs I have, as well as future images for?
This is causing a thought-shift in how I approach photography and why I should choose to pursue it.
It is a fair question to ask if what I leave behind will be appreciated by others after I am gone but I am not so sure. It’s possible my daughter can peruse the archives as a record and hopefully share in my life, my memories and of our time together. But after that? No one else will care and decades worth of images will become digital dust. Sobering thought.
We just recently acquired and discarded decades worth of photographic memories of a loved one who documented everything. But those were their memories, not ours. No one else in the family wanted them either so into the bin they went. This saddens me deeply.
I’d like to print at least 50 of the best images for each year in the past and moving forward, as physical mementos that my daughter can pick and choose to keep if desired. I hope she finds joy in looking back and sparking her own memories. Other than that, who wants to keep around all that crap? They’re just photos after all.
I suppose the answer, currently, is that they are for me and my memories. I also enjoy the photography process and the pursuit of that elusive master shot.
The battery is charged again, so off I go to make more memories.
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