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A photograph can disappear into a drawer for fifty years and still know exactly how to find you.

Open an old family album and a face may suddenly become more than a face. A house becomes a childhood home. A street becomes a journey. A group of strangers becomes a family gathering whose names, voices and relationships return to the mind.

The photograph has not changed.

You have.

The Library of Congress describes photographs as historical documents that can provide clues about people, places, communities and events. Family photographs can spark conversations, raise questions and connect generations with lives that existed before they were born.

But photography’s relationship with memory is more complicated than simply “preserving the past.”

Psychological research shows that autobiographical memory—the memory of our own lives—is reconstructed when we recall it. Emotion can strengthen some aspects of a remembered event while narrowing attention toward particular details. A memory can therefore feel extraordinarily vivid without every surrounding detail being equally accurate.

That changes the way we should think about the photograph. 313 words to go. A donation keeps you reading and supports our independence. Thank you!

By Edge of Humanity Magazine