Who Is this Person in this Photo? Oh, it's Me!

What is it about seeing old photographs of ourselves that touches us in such different, remarkable ways? Why is it that we see an old photo in which we are included or featured in and right away we want to tell someone “Hey, look at this picture of me.”

Perhaps it’s part ego, perhaps it’s part reflection or perhaps it is our defense against accepting what we might have become now that all those years and life experiences have literally reshaped us. “See, there was a time where I was everything that I don’t seem to be right now.”

The past serves as a great ally as well as an unbeatable opponent. If you’re like me, you link to the past quite easily. I may have a great deal of trouble getting to a place 5 or 10 miles from my door, but I have no trouble getting to place called 1965 or 1973.

I scanned a set of pictures recently which included shots of me from 30 years ago. Of course I enjoyed seeing all the shots of that series because they included my family and friends and spending time with those pictures was the closest I’m ever going to get to spend time with those people again—at least in that way.

But I can’t explain the therapeutic value of seeing photographs I was in and being able to say “There is that guy that I remember being. There is that guy who discovered certain music or enjoyed certain people, live through this president and that or even went through all the rites of passage we seem to have to pass through to get from then to now—wherever now is.

Without a doubt I did what we all do…shook my head and asked where did the time go and promised to remove the baggage I’ve collected along the way so I could look more like that in contemporary photos. But the most remarkable thing was to be able to insert myself into the moments and the context of those photos. I was able to reintroduce myself to the person under the tree in one of those photos. He was 25, unmarried, no kids, no real job, no mortgage, no fears, no boundaries. I first wanted to tell that person “You can’t believe what you have ahead of you.” But I stopped and instead asked “What can you tell me about who I was when all this journey-through-life stuff was beginning.”

That was the therapeutic part.

Many of the photos I scanned that day were fading and were looking very much like the past. But once they were scanned, refreshed and made vibrant again, they offered even greater insight because I could actually see what was in the photos and who some of the other players caught in that instant of time actually were.

After scanning them, I logged them and saved them to DVD and made duplicates of them. But I couldn’t help stopping to look at whom I was with that day or what I might have been thinking or doing when someone interrupted my moment to “Look this way and smile.”

But after a long time doing the headshakes and making the “wow, did I look like that” comments to myself, I made the one final silent chuckle, stopped and called out to my daughter coming down the stairs, “come here, take a look at this picture and tell me who it is.”

There are many reasons to scan your old special family photos. You’ll protect them, give them new enduring life, put them on long-lasting media, share them among others in your family and so on. But one of the most important reasons is to see yourself again. Go back to the moment the photo was taken and touch that time in your life. You may reacquaint yourself with someone very important in your past…..you.