One of the things that I’ve been thinking about for a long time is: what will happen to my photos once I’m gone? I’m not talking about whether the actual images will still exist (hint: print). I’m talking about what will people do with them.
It all started in the very early 90s when my paternal great-grandparents died. I was about 15 and as I was still spending my school holidays at my grandparents (because they’re the bestest), I spent a few days with my grandfather emptying his parents’ house.
He had grown up in that house until he got married in 1947. It was a typical well-off farmer’s house at the time, even though my great-grandfather was a blacksmith. I don’t know how they decided to settle there, about 25km from the town where my great-grandfather grew up.
One of the things we cleared was his old workshop; it was full of equipment from before WWII: large forges, horse/cow shoe making equipment, loads of bicycles with melted tyres, tons of reclaimed iron, etc. My grandfather donated a whole bunch of it to a local museum because it was fairly rare by then (e.g. giant forge bellows). I wish I had taken photos of it. We even got rid of a then extinct Type H Citroen van (it was pretty rusty and needed complete renovation).
We also found lots of military guns from WWI and WWII. Some of it pretty heavy. I’m guessing my great-grandfather wasn’t keen on letting anyone invade the country again. My grandfather gave everything to the local gendarmerie for legal reasons.
We found boxes of photos. Some photos were showing members of my family much younger than I ever saw them before. Some were showing people neither of us recognised. Maybe acquaintances of my great-grandparents’ from a time my grandfather was too young to remember. Most of them were of people. I guess at a time when photos and film were expensive and hard to come by, you didn’t spend time taking photos of landscapes, sunrises, or the cat.
My grandfather didn’t seem to care about those photos. He wanted to throw them away with the rest of the junk that had been accumulated in the house over the previous 60 years.
To me they were fascinating. They were a window into the past. They were showing moments that had been important to someone. Moments they decided they needed to keep forever. And even though by the 90s they had been forgotten, they had been important at some point in time. I managed to keep as many as my grandfather allowed me to (he didn’t want to be blamed if I filled my parents’ house with rubbish) and I still have them today.
That got me thinking at the time. Even though I didn’t have many photos back then (I was using a simple Canon AF35M my parents had given me that I still have, and always struggled to finish rolls of 24), I wondered what would happen to my photos when someone emptied my house after I was gone. They’d have no reason to keep any of them since most only have meaning to me. I don’t even have children, so no close family that could possibly be interested in them because they’re mine. Would that mean that all traces of me would disappear?
I feel a bit like Marty McFly in Back to the Future at the idea that if photos of me disappear, I disappear.
At the time I didn’t have a house. But I’ve been thinking about that idea since then. The fear that my photos would be thrown away because nobody cared for them has haunted me for the last 30 years.
I’ve been pondering somehow doing something to make sure my photos didn’t just disappear. Write books with them as illustrations maybe? People would be a bit less likely throwing away books. Or write a will that requires that something specific be made of them? (but then what?)
Does anyone care? Should I? After all, once I’m gone, who cares about my photos? They become irrelevant once they’re disconnected from the world through me.
#Photography #Opinion #IMayBeWrong #Memories