In Alina Tugend’s recent article about memory-keeping in the wake of Hurricane Sandy,“The Meaning in a Drawer Full of Old Family Snapshots” (NYTimes, 11-17-12) Professor A. Joan Saab, an associate profesor of art history and visual and cultural studies at the University of Rochester speaks of how people nowadays “don’t see a photo as much as a keepsake, or as marking a moment.” She’s conflicted over the convenience of digital photography, and the beautiful way light shoots through an online photograph from the screen.
Tugend also tracks down George Miles, curator of the Western Americana collection at Yale University. He’s drawn to the way photographic prints in an album convey narrative. “Someone made a story, ” says Miles, ” this image goes before that one and after this one… to tell a story that implies movement and sequencing and narrative.”
The lost art of storytelling begins with beautiful textured pages, captions, marginalia and the reassuring weight of an album spread open across our lap ……
