One of my favorite things to do whenever I’m in an antique shop is sift through the old photos; inevitably, there are dozens of them. Slides, negatives, those thick, metal backed photos you just can’t find anymore. Memories abandoned. And as I look through all of the faces of people I’ll never personally know, I can’t help but think of how they ended up here. Does somebody miss them?

I can’t decide if it makes me sad. What it does make me is curious. Who are these people? What is their story? Is it being told to their family, friends, generations beyond? And the truth is I’ll never know - I won’t know who they are. I won’t know their story. And I definitely don’t know if someone else is still telling it.

But I hope they are. I’d like to think, maybe, they digitized their items. Maybe, they’re safe in the cloud, somewhere people know where to find them. Photos are just two-dimensional memories. We take them because they mean something. So it’s funny to see where they end up, in a thrift store, on a shelf, available for purchase. I’d like to believe they’re somewhere else, too.

That’s the whole point, right? That we don’t need the physical. It’s temporary, just like most things. As long as we know our memories are safe, digitized for generations to come, then in theory, all our old media could end up on the same shelves as the photos I’m staring at right now. So in a sense, it’s a privilege to look at these photos. Maybe they’re getting a third life after all.