HAVE you still photo albums and faded photographs? We used to find them under a lamesita, a center table in the living room. These albums used to serve as a “while away time” for visitors to look at and enjoy. You also find them tucked in an aparador or closet — opened only when it’s time to clean the wardrobe.
Once you leaf through the photo albums, a flood of memories, both happy and sad, comes back — birth of a child, childhood, first day at school, friendship, first love and heartbreak, special milestones such as birthdays, holidays, and graduation, at work, travel adventures, and many more. It’s so enjoyable to reminisce times past that tell stories of life, evoking mixed emotions.
But in the advent of technology where one can use a smartphone to take selfies, groupies, usie (as in ‘us’), or wefies, are there still people who have them developed to keep physical copies and add them to photo albums? We bet only a few, as most of these photos are now saved in the phone’s photo gallery or in iCloud. Reason photo developer companies that used to print photographs closed shop for good.
Another sad reality: when elders in the family pass on, members of the family are sometimes not interested to keep old photographs left behind by the deceased, especially if the people in the photographs are not familiar or related to them. You find them in the trash instead — to rot on the landfill.
