“We are making photographs to understand what our lives mean to us.” — Ralph Hattersley, photo critic.
At important life events, I will generally have a camera on hand to record them. With age, I’ve come to recognize the importance of freezing these special moments in time, of creating keepsakes of cherished occasions and places, of immortalizing loved faces.
I’m also a nostalgic person, ever grateful for the present moment, but thrilled to enjoy a little wander from time to time down memory lane. Whether it’s a song that takes me back or an old photo album, the sentimentalist in me is okay with leaving the here and now to remember the there and then for a spell.
Because of this, I have by default become the keeper of the family photographs. As my husband and I, along with our siblings, emptied out the homes of our ageing parents, weathered albums, mounds of black-and-white snapshots and fading polaroids made their way to the stack of items coming to my house.
But not them all. When my parents gave up their home to move to an extended living facility, there was one album containing treasured photos from the beginning of their lives together that moved with them. Mom especially enjoyed flipping through those pages to relive memories and remember a life well lived.
They brought her much solace, too, when, after 70 years of marriage, she kissed her husband goodbye for a final time in May 2014.
Then, this past December, just shy of her 95th birthday, she left us to be with him again. As we emptied her room, my sister and I rediscovered the album — a memento full of, as Hattersley noted, an understanding of a family life that meant everything to us.
A decision was made then, that this book could not join all the others. It needed to be shared. So we agreed to take turns being the keepers of this particular family gem.
It made its way to me this month and I have decided to tackle the monumental task of scanning the collection so there is no longer any need to pass the book back and forth. This of course will depend on how they turn out.
Aged photos are often not the best quality. They are usually faded or badly damaged.
However, with image editors now, all is not lost. Tips on how to restore old photos are an easy find on the internet. Here are some helpful ones I discovered:
How to Restore Old, Damaged Photos
Repair and Restore Old Photos in Photoshop Video Tutorial
