Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Photographic Crisis of Faith...




Well, of sorts. See those people? That picture? We found it in a box at Tom's grandparents' house. No one alive knows who those people are. I scanned the picure anyway, because, well, some part of me couldn't allow this to go into oblivion, as many of the other pictures in that box have begun to. The images are fading into nothingness. One hundred years ago, someone cared enough to take the time and money to have this picture made. There's a sense that they're related to my husband, since the photos were found in his family's home, but no clear indication of who they might be. There were dozens of photos just like this one. I didn't scan them all, but I wanted to.

This has forced me to think about my own photos - what will become of them one hundred or more years from now. Will anyone care that I took artsy pictures of my gardens or my kids? Will they wonder who the heck these people are and stash the pictures back in a box? And it's almost made me redouble my efforts to get my photos organized - scrapped or otherwise. Even if they're sitting in a box somewhere, in no particular order, they deserve to have labels on them - names, dates, places. Anything I can think of to let future generations know why this picture was taken. Will I one day have a great-granddaughter-in-law who will want to take care with them for her children, as I am doing now?

I don't know if I have a point. I'm just sort of thinking about all those photos in that box and how they relate to what I do. I'm still thinking it through.

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