I found this very cute website through LENSCRATCH who posted about it and I loved it as soon as I saw it! Dear Photograph is a site that invites readers to submit photos of photos positioned over reality. Or, as the site’s description puts it, “take a picture of a picture from the past in the present.” I love the nostalgia and think its a perfect way to link the past and the future together.
It's a remarkably simple but powerful idea, and it does indeed evoke emotional responses by the reader. For example, a photograph of a smiling child. Behind her is a stocky man in a baseball cap, with his arms resting on hers. "Dear Photograph," the caption reads, "Dad is gone… but the strength of his arms will always be around us." It's signed "Holly".
Not all of the photographs are about loss of a loved one. There's a picture of a young girl with a hula-hoop. "I wish I could still hula-hoop like I used to," says the caption.
Dear Photograph is a remarkable demonstration of the power of ordinary, humdrum photographs to evoke memories. Photographs freeze moments in time, reminding us of who we were – and, by implication, of who we have become.
Though, unfortunately, when I researched this site in the media the Guardian shed light on the darker side of the site. Firstly the upfront terms and agreements states you basically give away your rights to the photograph, effectively giving away your memories.
They also talk of the sobering thought that the site, these photographs are only possible due to the past success of analogue photography, which give the aesthetic of ‘the past’ which is then re-photographed digitally and that this will hinder the site in say 30 years time. They go on to discuss the flaws in digital technology and its inability to create impermanent images which are stored as a digital file and will therefore take away from the idea of photography as having a physical outcome and the fact that photographs may not live on after there owners death.
Martin Parr concluded a piece on ‘how to take better holiday photographs’ with the dimple advice: print them! "We are in danger," he wrote, "of having a whole generation that has no family albums, because people just leave them on their computer, and then suddenly they will be deleted."
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