What happens to the photographs?

If my grandmother were alive, today she would have celebrated her 100th birthday. She would have received a certificate from the king of England and enjoyed a bowl of soup and most probably half a glass of champers surrounded by her family and nursing home friends in their super white Nike’s. And I would tell her that I still keep a photo of her in my wallet.

But what's going to happen when it's my time to pass? What happens to my photographs that were captured before the time of digital? Boxes filled with sepia-toned images in an off-white boxed frame will be passed down from my generation to the next, until one-day names are forgotten, and the ancestry lineage gets a little muddled.

I often wonder who the muse is in an oil painting, or the model in the black and white print. The pictures of my grandmother date back to when she was half my age, some surrounded by her children. While I keep these momentos safe and am reminded of her existence, I still fear the image will be discarded, destroyed and forever forgotten.

What happens then? We transform it from printed matter to pixels. We teach our children to retain, and we encourage our children to reminisce. Tonight I brought down my photo boxes and watched her great-grandson ask who the woman in this picture was. Keep your memories safe and your images safer.

Happy Birthday, Maria.

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