I am a sucker for things gone by. Or maybe I just didn’t value them enough while they were around, feeling of guilt that has turned into a longing for the bygone…or is it just life passing by and the urge to look through the rear-view mirror…

I have suddenly started missing those bulky family albums or the family album series, with pictures stuck chronologically right from the wedding, to child birth, children growing up to sometimes even the child getting married. I remember the black & white days when people used to glue corners on the black album pages and insert the photographs, thin butter paper films protecting the photos. Black & white gave way to colours and to plastic albums where you could just slip in the photographs in the transparent pockets.I didn’t much fancy those albums though. For me the plastic albums steal the feel and the aroma of the past, the lure of the faded black & white pictures.  

Then came the digital age! We don’t print photographs anymore they are just stored in our laptops or mobiles.  Our handsets serve both as cameras and albums. We take pictures everyday I am not sure how often we go back and look at them… selfies are a big rage. People just share photos, albums and videos on social media. Gone are the days when relatives were invited to browse through the wedding albums or watch the wedding videos. Everything is out there now, in the social media or in the Cloud. People would rather get their own Cloud than an album.

When I went home this time, I fished out the old albums,right from our parents’ wedding to us growing up, from black & white to coloured– then suddenly there are no albums post my college days. By then things had startedgoing digital and nobody cared for albums anymore. As a result, the albums werelying neglected, some old pictures faded. I got the old albums and thephotographs back with me, planning to recreate them…may be the first one couldbe an anniversary gift to my parents!

It does seem that I am not the only one missing photo albums. The old-style photo albums are now readily available online making it possible for me to jump into this project. Delighted that people are trying to revive the good old things from the yester years!