Blogspot: The Quiet Conversations of Old Photographs
Executive Assistant, Christina Nemir, September 18, 2025
I’ve become the collector of photographs in my family. As loved ones pass, downsize, or simply clean out closets, envelopes and boxes of old photos inevitably find their way to me. Each delivery transports me back to another time—sometimes to my own childhood, sometimes to the lives of relatives long before I knew them. Every picture tells a story. Sometimes I fill in the details from memory, while other times the images stir memories I’ve forgotten: the scratchy feel of my mother’s favorite wool sweater, my aunt’s long, coal-black hair now cropped and silver, the dogwood tree outside my childhood window shifting with each season.
There’s a comfort in physically holding these stacks of photographs. My breathing slows, my thoughts quiet. Some photos are pebbled with a matte finish. They have rounded corners and on the backs I find a handwritten date and sometimes a message- a feature I love. Some are delicate with scalloped edges with white borders that sharply frame black and white images of familiar faces. Some are faded and crinkled or stuck together; the glossy finishes peeling back leaving only imagination to fill in the missing pieces.
I think about how much has happened between the moment the photos were taken and now. All of the history, the joy, the sorrow, people that have come and gone. I ask myself if holding onto these photos is simply holding on to the past. Will anyone after me treasure these pictures as I do? Will they notice my fingerprints on the corners and wonder who held it in their hands?
Recently, while walking through the exhibition Frida Kahlo: Picturing an Icon at the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, I was struck by how personal photographs of Frida and her family were displayed with reverence. Before I even read the labels, I wanted to learn about her through these images: about her love, her pain, her resilience. It reminded me of my own collection. Frida was not just an icon on canvas but a woman who kept photos much like mine—not posed for history or to be on display, but for memory’s sake.
I lingered at certain images, almost as if in conversation, letting them reveal quiet truths, secrets, and engaging me in details of a time long ago and people I never knew, but now felt close to. And I wondered: if someone were to curate my life through the pictures I’ve inherited, what would they see? Could they feel my joy, my sadness, my gratitude?
Perhaps photographs are less about preserving the past and more about continuing the conversation—between generations, strangers, even across time. Like Frida’s collection, my family’s photos are reminders that behind every image lies a life deeply lived. I imagine Frida sitting, sifting through her photos as I do with mine, leaving finger prints on the corners, as she left on the world.
