This photo was taken around 1937 in Beirut. My mum, Celia, is torturing her big brother, Peter, with my grandmother, Elsie, looking on and sister, Alison, on the left. I love the way this captures a spontaneous, silly kids moment. My mother’s British/American family lived in Lebanon for three generations. My Quaker missionary great-grandparents, their […]
This photograph of my grandparents makes my heart flutter. They were not supposed to fall in love; my grandmama was disowned from her family for abandoning her pre-arranged groom-to be. She lost everything to come to a country where everyone hated her and the way she looked. But instead of being bitter, she taught my […]
We all know the feeling. There was something we wish we’d said to someone special. Now they’re gone and we can’t go back in time to tell them what we wanted them to know…what they needed to know. Or, can we? One photographer gives you a chance to say what you always wish you’d said to your […]
Whether you’re scanning your film, printed photos, and documents at home or using a professional scanning company, you will undoubtedly be faced with this perplexing issue: Scanning doesn’t actually archive information about your photo. That’s right, digitizing your vintage family photos isn’t enough. It’s no different than discovering an old photo album only to realize that no […]
My interest in “the travel snapshot” began when I was a child, traveling with my mother simply because we wanted to see new things and we could since it was just the two of us. I always made sure I had at least three disposable cameras with me where ever we would go. As we drove […]
Meet my paternal great-grandfather Jesse, a red-headed blue-eyed guy of (mostly) Scottish extraction. Here, he’s sitting with his grandsons. When Jesse married his wife in a Virginia/North Carolina border town, they decided to move up North to Jersey for a better life because they were a mixed-race couple. Once settled, Jesse got a job in […]
When it comes to preserving family history, where do you start? If you’re asking yourself this question as you stare at boxes of old family photos, stacks of love letters and piles of dusty documents, you’re not alone! The idea of recording your family history can be a bit overwhelming, even if you’re an experienced […]
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I realized I couldn’t remember… You may recall my previous post here on Save Family Photos where I described my dismay when realizing I couldn’t remember my grandmother’s voice when my daughter asked about her. That sadness and regret haunted me for a few weeks; then it made me determined to ensure […]
In my first conversation with Rachel, co-founder of Save Family Photos, she told me, “I truly believe photos are memory triggers; they help us remember to remember.” Though she’s probably said it a thousand times, it struck me deeply. I recently started a personal history business, in which I interview people about their lives and then […]
He reaches up and gently pulls a tuft of his hair to show me how easily it falls out. It’s grey now, his hair. It wasn’t last April, when we met at that little café for my 20th birthday. I sat across from him, secretly angry he was ruining the first day of my twenties […]
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