Why old pictures matter

Photographer: Milly-Anne Kellner. Model: Alex B

I received a lovely surprise today from a very old friend of mine whom I have not seen for over 30 years. A couple of weeks ago he tracked me down through the internet and sent me a scan of a picture of me aged 17 which had been published in the  catalogue of an exhibition about a famous spot in my  home town, where I have not been since I was 19. When I emailed him back to thank him I asked him to let me know how I could get hold of the catalogue. He promptly posted it to me so when I got the book this morning it really was a welcome surprise. I was over the moon.
The  exhibition was about what used to be a special place, some public gardens where young people used to gather to make music, engage in discussions, spend time together and  dream of amazing things they would do in the future.
At some point these beautiful gardens were no longer looked after by the municipality and became a shadow of their former glory. This year, 2013,  it will be two hundred years since the modern city was planned expanding the ancient nucleus and, as part of the celebrations, an exhibition was recently put together about these famous public gardens, which have punctuated the history of the city, throughout their phases of growth and decline.

Photographer: unknown. Me at 17 with two friends

 The curators of the exhibition asked people to send in pictures of the time when the gardens were a lively meeting point, a centre of counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s, a modern agora as someone has called them.  The years when I was growing up, the 1970s, were definitely pre-Facebook and pre-mobile phones days and people would gather spontaneously to meet up in the one place which seemed to be an obligatory stop in one's everyday routine. 'Let's go to the gardens' or 'let's meet at the gardens' we would say, in the knowledge one could always join a group of known young people, sitting around the benches, having fun. Many of these pictures were in private collections, as memorabilia - the old snapshots of one's youth.
 I have lost a lot of pictures throughout my life, due to moving from place to place and not caring much about carrying around old boxes, but have subsequently regretted it. This is why, since I began modelling in earnest, I have made it a point to collect as many images of me as a model, in my deviantArt gallery, regardless of whether I like the images or not, sometimes  displaying them in special folders eg The Discarded. My dA gallery is not my modelling portfolio, I have images in it of varying quality which  I would probably never show elsewhere. It really is my very own private collection of my images, of  me as a model and also as a photographer. I know at some point I will stop modelling, but I will have most of the pictures.
Photographs are such that often a few years down the line they seem to be more beautiful and interesting than when they were actually taken.

Photographer: my father. Me at 3

All I am trying to say is that keeping old pictures, to me, matters, it does now. After all, if those old snapshots of the gardens had been thrown away, the exhibition and the book would have never happened. I can assure you that seeing myself as I was back then really moved me and gave me joy and it was equally good to see the faces of my old friends and school mates, some of whom are no more. Photos play an important part in how we remember and allow us to revisit the past, from the standpoint of today.