The importance of photos

I can look at photos of Clover all day long. But not other photos. I’ve never been able to look at photo galleries for very long, and even when I go to a museum I tend to go through really fast. I pick up a lot of detail, and I remember it, so looking at visual art becomes boring.

I think the reason I like see pictures of Clover is because it is the strongest validation that I have of em having a fun childhood. And non-violent. A bummer, I know, but it is something I scan for when I look at photos of children.

There are very few surviving photos of me as a child, because at multiple times in my childhood my mother would either be forced to leave behind a lot of possessions, or her husband would destroy the photos in a drunken rage. The aggregate effect on my life is that it taught me to not care about my personal culture, but to have strong opinions about others’ personal culture. It is why I stay up some nights wondering when Susan’s laptop was last backed up. And it is why I go to great lengths to both preserve and share the photos of Clover’s experiences.

I can’t imagine what Clover will do with a high-definition and hyper-preserved collection of artifacts, but I know that I have these moments to look back and know that our smiles were genuine.