Long ago, it must be.
I have a photograph.
Preserve your memories, they’re all that’s left you!
Simon and Garfunkel – Bookends
This is a picture of my great-grandmother, taken by my grandfather around 1960, just a few years before I was born. The pictures in this post are obviously not my own but still they hold memories for me. Memories I never lived myself. But still they are memories conveyed by the photographs.
I knew my great-grandmother, she died when I was around seven or eight years old. And I knew my grandfather, who took this picture, as well. Here he is with my mother, the dog and the tame crow they had.
Memories! Photographs are memories, reminders of days past. They fix in time those unique moments and places that will never come back.
It is important not to rely only on photographs like most people do today – see the overwhelming Instagram-Selfie flood – but also on your own brain to store the most important memories and feelings. But on the other hand, a single photograph can bring back all the other moments associated with it.
I’m not one for keeping family albums and showing them off to everyone. That’s boring me and all the others. I don’t even take many photographs of my family and perhaps that’s not a good thing. I should do it more but it’s really not my thing.
Anyways, Simon and Garfunkel had it nailed with this song. And the memories must not necessarily be of people, of family. For me, my pictures remind me of the moment I took them. Of the feelings I had at that moment, of the state of mind I was in.
My memories of the fun I had taking them!
Keep on shooting and thanks for visiting!
Frank Lehnen Photography 
Wonderful Frank
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Thank you, Yuri! I appreciate
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I don’t quite agree with you. We all certainly reach a point in life in which photos, real life printed ones not the rather ephemeral ones, – along with our memories – are all that is left of the “older generation”.
My mum is the only one left of seven sisters. Not so long ago we, the “cousins”, got together and some of us had old photo albums with us. We had a lovely time looking through them, although we didn’t recognise all of the faces and situations.
In contrast to today’s youth, we often do have a tangible history in form of our photos.With the exception perhaps of Instax photos or the modern polaroids, the youth of today will almost certainly leave almost no traces of themselves for future generations – all selfies notwithstanding.
Our printed photos will still be here when we are long gone. I think that it is important that my grandson will one day be able to show his kids who I was, how I lived and what life was like back then.
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Right, the printed photograph is important, and family photographs should be made and shared! It’s just that I’m simply very bad at making photographs of my family so I’m afraid I will have a lot of pictures I made but very few of friends and family.
I know that’s bad!
As for the youth of today, your comment made me start. So true, in some decades there will be no more reminders of the young people of today….. Unless Facebook will still exist, which I doubt, just as all the file formats and hardware we use today.
We build flimsy houses that won’t stand the test of time, we live digital lives… I guess future archaeologists will have a very hard time to learn anything about our time!
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