Dear Photograph
By Taylor Jones
4/5
()
About this ebook
We all have moments we wish we could relive. We'd give anything to skid down the toboggan hills of our youth, to breathe in the smell of our children as babies, or to spend just one more minute with someone we've lost. Dear Photograph provides a way to link these memories from the past to the present, overlapping them to see how the daydreams of our memories collide with our current realities.
The idea is simple: hold up a photograph from the past in front of the place where it was originally taken, take a second photograph, and add a sentence of dedication about what the photograph means to you. The results, however, are astounding, which is why millions have flocked to dearphotograph.com and thousands have submitted their own Dear Photographs.
This stunning visual compilation includes more than 140 never-before-seen Dear Photographs, as well as a space for you to attach your own cherished photo. By turns nostalgic, charming, and poignant, Dear Photograph evokes childhood memories, laments difficult losses, and, above all, celebrates the universal nature of love.
Taylor Jones
TAYLOR JONES was inspired to start Dearphotograph.com as he flipped through old family photos at his parents’ kitchen table. The twenty-one-year-old came across one of his brother sitting at the same table and lifted it up to match the lines of the photo to what he saw in front of him, then snapped a picture of the picture. In a moment, Dearphotograph.com was born, creating an Internet phenomenon that has captured the hearts of millions from around the world.
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Reviews for Dear Photograph
8 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I had visited the dear photograph website, where people retake old photos in the same location as the original photo while addressing the photo ("Dear Photograph..") reminiscing about the time when the photo was taken. I then saw this book on display at the local library and picked it up. This book gathers together some good examples from the website, and they are often touching or poignant. It's interesting how much stays the same for the people's lives who contribute to the website and the book. Does it say anything about how stable they are that they can retake a photograph decades after they originally took it? That they live in the same city, neighborhood or even house? We don't get much of a sense of the people taking the photo, as they often only write a sentence or two addressing the photo. I'd have liked to have more context for a lot of these pictures. It's still an interesting book, with some nice photos.
Book preview
Dear Photograph - Taylor Jones
Dedication
Dedicated to the memory of Mr. Ianni …
Dear Photograph,
Dad, you built the roof over our heads and the love in our hearts. We miss you.
Love, the Ianni family
and Mrs. B.
Dear Photograph,
Without you in our lives, we would not have found the strength to be where we are today.
The Blasman family
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
The Beginning
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
THE BEGINNING
My life changed completely on May 25, 2011. I was twenty-one years old and living with my parents in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. For all the times I’d thought of moving out on my own, I’m so thankful that I hadn’t yet flown the coop. Again that night it was proven that everything good in my life has always started at home. We were just finishing up one of my favorite meals—homemade ribs and rice à la Mom, which I’ve come to crave and appreciate all the more since moving out—and we decided to look through an old photo album together. We didn’t have to go digging through half a dozen dusty boxes hidden away in the attic—nope, not in the Joneses’ house. Mom, an avid scrapbooker, had piled our house high with hundreds of albums, which she had carefully filled with thousands and thousands of family photos. Our lives had been beautifully and thoroughly scrapbooked.
Keaton, my youngest brother, grabbed a blue photo album, the kind with plastic sheets inside to keep the photos protected. The album was from 1995 or so, and it featured photos of my younger self and family, back when fanny packs and big glasses were the fashionable items of the day and my wardrobe was incomplete without suspenders and OshKosh B’gosh overalls. We gathered around the kitchen table and began to look through the album.
As Keaton turned the pages, I noticed a photo of a three-year-old Landon—my middle brother—beaming beside his Winnie the Pooh birthday cake. When I looked closer, I realized that Landon had been sitting at the exact same table we were sitting at now, in the exact same chair. And when Mom had taken that old photo, she’d been sitting where I currently sat. I grabbed the photo from the plastic and held it up in front of me, matching the old photo of Landon against the present scene. It really is true: when the light goes on in your brain, everything seems to slow down and become very quiet, almost soundless. Everyone at the table—Mom, Dad, Landon, Keaton, and even my dog, Mylie—gave me quite the looks. Dad asked, What in the world are you doing?
Little did we know that this odd moment would start a worldwide viral phenomenon.
I began running around the house with various old photos in hand, taking picture after picture, holding up each shot against its present location and snapping a new photo to capture the scene. The light bulb came on again, and I knew I had to share these photos with my friends.