This is probably going to sound really silly but I am going to write about it anyway.

I always thought about how the nature of photographs have changed, but I never got the chance or had the intention of writing these thoughts down.

I guess what spurred me to write about this today was that my mom recently showed me one portrait of her father (my grandfather)’s family when they were really, really young. And by young I mean my grandfather was a toddler.

The photo my mom showed me was on her phone. It was a picture of the printed photo so that made the quality even worse, but it also made me analyze the picture harder.

The photo was grainy and brown. It was a typical family photo from the early 1900s. Everyone was standing very stiffly with stoic expressions on their faces. My grandfather was the youngest in the photo, sitting in a little stool with his chubby legs crossed with little black-buckled shoes on his feet.

Looking at the photo was so surreal! That baby in the picture was my grandfather, those older little kids standing with him were my great-uncles and aunts, and the two parents standing with all of them were my great-grandparents! It struck me that my great-grandmother was once a young woman, and that my great-grandfather, who I had never seen before, bore a striking resemblance to my grandfather in his latter years.

I never stopped to think that a photograph, which is just a sheet of paper covered in various intensities of ink, could be so powerful. One moment in time could be captured, and when looked at, you can start to wonder all sorts of things, like: where was the photo taken? Why did my grandfather’s family take that photo? What did they do after they took that photo? What did my grandfather’s voice sound like back then? (<– haha that last one, but seriously I wonder that sometimes.)

It also made me realize that, as hard to believe as it is, withered old senile people were once chubby babbling babies! It also made me realize that photography has evolved an enormous amount since that portrait of my grandfather’s family was taken. During that time, that was probably the only picture the family had of themselves. It was probably a major event too, because getting a photo of your entire family taken cost a ton back then.

Now, only a few decades later, with the invention of the Cloud and Snapchat and Instagram and all that, we probably take at least 20 photos a day! And we take photos of everything! Family photos, food, pets, triple-chin selfies–anything! Taking and sharing photos has become the societal norm, and it’s how we connect with each other.

Before, photos were tokens of treasured memories. They still are, but the weight of the photos are different now, if you know what I mean.

My, how times have changed!

~~Katie