This image came from a roll of film left in a camera that made its long journey to me some years ago. A woman was selling her deceased husband’s collection, and through a mutual friend, I was the new owner. After developing the film, I inquired as to whether the family would like the images, and I was told that, no, they wouldn’t. I was never sure, but it seemed like there may have been some unhappiness there that the survivors didn’t want remembered.
But a photograph is a memory, captured in that brief moment when the taker aims and presses the shutter button. Unless it is utterly destroyed, a photograph will always exist to communicate – what was going through the taker’s mind, what they wanted commemorated, documented, celebrated. These images were taken, then forgotten, and now they can be seen. This moment was once important to someone. Perhaps it can be again.