Let me be honest. I spend a lot of time in Pinterest. Apparently, it's fun to look at things. I try to make it a little more interesting by looking at different categories of things, and today I took the cultured approach and checked out the "Art" category. One of my favorite things I saw was a set of photographs of people
recreating past family photos. I have
seen this kind of thing on tumblr before, but I had never really thought about
how much it is an art.
There’s always a before and after shot of
these – the first an old, faded family photo, usually of children. Sometimes posed, sometimes ridiculous, always
looking like a nineties photo. You know that
quality I’m talking about – the way you can tell some photos weren’t made by
digital cameras. They just look unedited
and awesome the way they are, because nobody looked at it immediately after and
announced how terrible their face is. And
the second shot is the same people, maybe ten years later so the children aren’t
super tiny, and they pull the same ridiculous faces they pulled before and it’s
just hilarious because they usually don’t fit that role. Like, crying three year old was cute, but
thirteen year old is super funny.
I like the idea of people recreating the
past – it’s the idea of nostalgia as a type of homesickness, and the past is a
destination we try to reach. In my life
right now, I’ve been trying to think of ways to move forward – much like a
favorite winning presidential candidate – and these photos are a reminder that
the past is also a nice place to go. There
are things that shouldn’t work like they did in the past but there are things
that definitely should.
