Photography in my family started as a documentation of our lives. It was the key to remembering our forgotten and blurry past. My father used his collection of cameras: Yasuda, Kodak, Nikon and Polaroids to capture the whole of my childhood. But it was a time, when there were no selfie sticks, a time when you couldn’t take out your phone to take a photograph when the moment felt good.
In those days, family photographs were important, it meant that each and every member of the family had to be present for that one shot that would take more than 20 seconds. You only had 30 slides and it all counted. You couldn’t delete the photographs. And once they were sent to your home in an envelope, the whole of the family would sit together and sift through complaining and cracking jokes about the photographs.
But why talk about them now? Because these photographs unravel for us the transition of time; stories that were left unsaid. They address our stories and touch us softly to say that even with the impermanence of life saving memories gives us the joy of living.
We found some good old memories through Nepal Picture Library that we thought were worth sharing.They may not tell you the history of Kathmandu, but these are somebody’s cherished memories worth sharing. After all, it’s not about whose photographs you are looking at, rather what it makes you feel.
