Culture News

Site of the Week: dig up the past with Dear Photograph

By Sarah Madges October 1, 2012

Much in the spirit of Frank Warren’s PostSecret project in which people anonymously share secrets, Dear Photograph is a collective online scrapbook composed entirely of photos submitted by strangers. Taylor Jones, the 22-year-old founder of this now global phenomenon, curates the site, giving people an anonymous but community-based forum to tap into their pasts and share their experiences.

Although people can submit any kind of photo they want, the general format is to submit a picture of an older photograph being help up in front of the same spot where it was originally taken. Each post is accompanied by an explanatory anecdote that begins: “Dear Photograph…” — the idea being to illustrate the time elapsed, and to visually reconcile the past with the present.

Through a sort of digital nostalgia, Jones’s site offers a platform for people’s personal histories to form a timeline of universal experiences. The concept might seem simple or cliché, but the emotional response to these photos of photos is more complex than you’d expect, inspiring both a connection to the larger human family, and urging you to dig into your own past — and maybe even to contribute to the collection yourself.

TAGS: community, nostalgia, photographs, site of the week, tumblr blog,