Story by Austin Sailsbury
Not long ago, the average person did not carry
a camera in their pocket. People brought out
cameras only for special occasions, not everyday
life. Those old enough to remember taking photos
in the pre-digital and pre-camera phone era will also recall
how complex it could be: There was the expensive arsenal of
lenses and camera bodies, the bulky tangle of accessories, the
setting and adjusting of exposure levels and shutter speeds,
the buying of film, and the cost of having that film developed
in a lab and the pictures printed. Even when you thought you
had done everything right, you always went to pick up your
photos with a touch of anxiety.
In the early days of photography, images were made, not
taken, by craftspeople with a mastery of both art and alchemy.
Since the days of sober-faced portraits imprinted on silvered
plates, the power of an image to stop time and capture a
moment has been the stuff of magic. Whether developed on
glass or tin or glossy Kodak paper, it took time to process a
single image. And that meant fewer photos in our possession.
Today, that magic happens with a tap of the thumb.
we snap selfies commemorate our travels, document the wonderful insanity of childhood, capture
and create the news, and illustrate stories like we’ve never done before. We take and share more
photos now than at any other time in history, yet most of those images will never find life outside
the digital
confines of our camera roll or be shared beyond the social
realm of Facebook or Instagram. When rare, photos were
considered treasured artifacts worthy to hang on the wall and
then hand down to future generations.
Holding an old photograph in your hands is remarkable
beyond the nostalgia it invokes. Whether it’s a black-and-
white curio found at a flea market or a wavy Polaroid from
your own childhood, both hold power over us: the power
to light our imaginations and to sharpen our memories.
Experiencing these images in a tangible way helps us to time
travel, to hold history in our hands and look it straight in the
eye in a way that scrolling through photos on our phones
likely never will.
These relics are proof of people and places as they once
were, the past speaking to the present through shadows and
light, helping us to remember, reminding us to reflect.
If we take a step back and reconsider the tool at our
fingertips, we might discover the power to turn even our
most spontaneous snapshots into something with lasting
beauty, something worth bringing into the real world.
Physical objects with personal stories to tell. Objects worth
passing on. Objects that capture just a bit of life’s vast magic.
A photo with personal meaning, one that encapsulates
your youth or memorializes a perfect moment in time, will
always hold special value. It glows brightly-memories
captured like fireflies in a jar. Why wouldn’t we carry this light
into the physical world around us? Perhaps the ideas we share
here will help us all do just that.
