Downstairs, on the unfinished side of my basement -- that serves as a hiding place for my family’s washing machine, assorted items that don’t have any other place to go, and some scary spiders -- there is a box. Pop off its dusty lid and you’ll find that this box is overflowing with hundreds and hundreds of photographs, some in color with “Walgreen’s One Hour Photo” stamped on the back, and others in black and white, with a fading date and description written on the reverse side in cursive.
I can spend hours sifting through the pictures packed in this box without rhyme or reason, setting aside those that catch my eye, so I can ask my parents to tell me the story behind each one. I’ve smiled at pictures of my brother and me playing in the backyard of our beloved Ohio home and at snapshots chronicling my first year on earth, all set in a New Jersey house I cannot remember. I’ve laughed at a photo of my parents on their honeymoon, standing on the beach clad in tank tops and oversize sunglasses. I’ve reveled over a black-and-white picture of my grandparents at their senior prom and over photos of them as children, standing with the great-grandparents I’ve never met. For me, this box of photos is more than just that; it is a connection to the past. My own past and the past that has shaped my family over generations.
Last week, I was organizing my own photos, trying to choose some to print, to decorate the white walls of my dorm room. As I was doing this, it occurred to me that besides the pictures I printed for this same purpose last August, I hadn’t printed any pictures in years. And if you are like me, you probably haven’t either. You may have some recent pictures in frames, but I’m betting most of the photos you’ve taken since digital cameras and smartphones came along are stored on those devices, a computer, or online.
I have 2,494 photos stored on my iPhone from the last year and a half alone. Yet I’ve only printed a tiny fraction of these photos and those that I did, I threw away after they grew faded from a year of hanging on my dorm room wall. I have no physical photo album of my high school years or my first year at college. Why would I take the time to make one, when I can upload pictures to Facebook or Instagram in a matter of seconds? But maybe the fastest way isn’t always the best way. With the rate at which technology advances, will Facebook and Instagram even be popular in the next five years? In the next 10? How will I show my children photos from my high school graduation or of me and my college roommates if the platforms where I stored pictures from this time in my life are someday obsolete?
It seems that the answer to this dilemma is to rely on what has worked in the past. While there are dozens of excellent photo storage programs I could invest in, I believe there is something special about an actual printed photograph. I believe that holding a photograph in your own two hands connects you to the story behind that snapshot of a moment in time. It makes that memory more real, even if it isn’t your own. I want my children to be able to ask me about the stories behind old photographs they find in a dusty box in the basement. So let’s print pictures and let’s save them in albums and boxes. Let’s make our stories tangible.
