Photographs and Memories

Have you heard about the Lost and Found Photo Exhibition at the Aperture Foundation in New York City? http://lostandfound311.jp/en/  It runs through the 27^th of April and is described as “photographs from Tohoku, a profoundly moving exhibition of photographs recovered from the devastation following the two epic natural disasters and the subsequent nuclear catastrophe that took place in the Tohoku region of Japan a year ago, last March.” The photographs in this exhibition are specifically from the town of Yamamoto in Miyagi Prefecture.

While searching for survivors, rescue personnel found and collected albums and photographs. Volunteers cleaned them and tried to reunite the photos with their owners. According to the web site, there are a few hundred thousand unclaimed photos. The web site tells about Project Salvage Memory and describes the process of trying to reunite people with their photographs.

Reading about this project and exhibit chokes me up a bit. What a wonderful thing these volunteers are doing.  Photographs record the people and things and events that are important in our lives.  As my friends can attest, I take a lot of photos and make albums to record everything. I like to look at the pictures and remember. If I were to lose all of my possessions, I would mourn my photos albums the most.