Good things that matter.
If there’s a fire, I’m grabbing the kids and the cat, then the photos. Not the digital ones, they’re all backed up three times in various places including the cloud (please do this!). I’m grabbing a sturdy Paperchase storage box filled with loose prints going back generations. Yes, I should scan the lot - and I have started - but it’s a mountain. Next, I have an edited box of paper things from the kids over the years - cards and drawings and bits and pieces. I should scan all that too. But it’s not going to be the same.
I want to feel the paper and the blobs of paint, see the crayon on the very edge of the card as they’ve coloured onto the table whilst “writing” their name.
I want to hold the handmade gift tag by its fraying ribbon. The tangible craft of these things matters to me. I can feel the age of my kids in my hands, their preschool selves real again for a moment. It won’t be long before I’ll hang handmade decorations on the tree, the fruits of their creative growing up, from star-shaped lumps of salt dough to glittery stars of metallic card.
“I love you Mummy”
Maybe it’s a sensory thing as well as emotion and nostalgia, but oh, the feel of paper when what’s on it has meaning. I still have a house and garage full of books I might yet read, and a Kindle that is hardly ever charged. My obsession with photography books continues to grow to the extent that things sometimes topple over. I would rather turn the medium-weight, matt-finish pages of a photo book than stand in a beautifully curated gallery, although that too is one of my favourite things to do.
Absorbing visual art online is nice, but whatever. It’s a bag of crisps from a vending machine when I’m not near enough to my dinner. But paper, imprinted with art either visual or written, is food for the soul.
Print your photos. Print them well. Stand back every now and again to really look at the visual art on your wall. Take the photo book off the shelf and savour the weight and textures; the tangible art in your hands, and oh the way the tones sing in fine art printed photographs.
Feel the story. Feel the meaning, all over again.
Don’t leave it all on the hard drive. Buy good things that matter. Love every moment of treasuring them.
