I opened a box of photos of my dead relatives, and the memories came flooding back. But will my descendants covet my digital image files the same way?

There’s nothing to make me question, or at least re-examine, my own mortality like the death of a close relative or friend. My aunt, a couple of years older than me and so more like a sister, died of cancer in her early forties. A trio of friends and former colleagues have died suddenly, early 50s. The big one, of course, was when my father passed away.

Sometimes I want to ask these people a question. Something I think they’ll remember and I want confirmed. But then I recall they are not here anymore.

What I do have is their photographs. Pictures of them, if not actually by them. I can look at those and feel like they’re less distant. 

Then, like most of us, I have pictures of family members I never met. Like my maternal grandfather James, who died during World War II. The appearance of his photo was often accompanied by my grandmother’s storytelling; the tale of how his health never recovered after diving repeatedly into the North Sea to save children from a torpedoed transport. 

More recently a school project unearthed a photo of my paternal grandad Sid, who’d also served, and from whom, as a child, I used to solicit the war stories no one else asked. 

Though he is mid 20s in the WWII picture I have, he looks mid 40s. 

Perhaps it’s just what war does to people, how everyone from that era looks ancient compared to today, or simply that, slightly crumpled and sepia-toned, it’s just an old photograph. 

But it’s a tangible artefact that still exists 80 years later, long after Sid has passed. And prompts storytelling even now.

While hopefully I’m more focused on the present and future than the past, such ruminations do have me pondering how – and if – the photos I’ve taken over the past few decades that document my own family’s lives will ever be poured over or studied by future generations. 

My hunch is that they won’t. Especially not if they only exist as digital files on outdated and probably non accessible media.

By chance, any prints that do very occasionally get made, tend to be those that document very significant occasions. 

By default, should future relations happen to chance upon these photographs, they will experience what amounts to a showreel of highlights. A carefully curated edit of my life, with all the boring bits cut out. 

If a ‘best of’ is all that survives any of us, then maybe that’s not so bad after all.

Check out the best photo albums, so you can store your old family photos nicely. Or check out the best film scanners, so you can have digital versions of your old slides and negatives