Old photos ... today and in the future

It'll be funny to look back at "old" pictures 30 years from now

Feb 03, 2025

Remember when your parents and/or grandparents would sit with you and rummage through old photos of them when they were your age? You’d break out the old photo albums—or, in my case, disorganized boxes of stuff—and go through each one, every print a treasure, treating them ever-so-gently, carefully preserving their pristine origins.

You breeze through flashbacks of yesteryear, when men wore hats and ties and women were fitted in flowered dresses with hair carefully coiffed in styles of the time.

Then there are the pictures of you in your awkward adolescence, squinting at the camera, arms and legs akimbo, like a giraffe standing on red hot lava. You’re wondering … who gave you that awful haircut (they called it a “cowlick”) and why you thought shorts, white knee socks and penny loafers were a look.

Not exactly a dernier cri.

And that picture on the pony? Burn it.

But it’s all worth it when you hit upon a gem among the thousand pictures of your cousins and strange people you vaguely remember. Like this …

**My parents’ wedding photo, Sept 9, 1944**

He was 24, she 19. They were married for 61 years.

How times have changed

Most old photos are reminders of how different the times were then and how standards and culture have changed.

I have, for example, photos of my father, a lifer with the Associated Press, who had the honor of photographing the placement of the final piece of St. Louis’ Gateway Arch in 1965. He and a few engineers and city officials stood

atop the nearly completed 670-foot monument, wearing hardhats and smiles—but no other safety apparatus. Apparently, they thought the hardhats would be sufficient protection against plummeting 67 stories to the pavement below.

And there‘s the photo of my Dad on the field at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis in 1948. He’s crouching on the field and peering through the lens of his old 4x4 camera to photograph an aging Babe Ruth four months before the Bambino’s death. It wasn’t Dad’s only scrape with fame, but it’s the one caught on frame.

Speaking of baseball, I have a photo of my brother Steve and me, in our Little League uniforms, gloves at the ready, from our backyard in 1961. He was 8 years old, I wasn’t quite 6. Steve looks intense; he’s ready for that high chopper that might careen into his face. I’m wearing a Mona Lisa smile.

Neither of us became a baseball player. But it was once a dream.

Sharing photos: 2055

It got me thinking.

Imagine 30 years from now, in 2055, when a grandma of the future is sharing old photos of 2025 with her progeny. The experience just won’t be the same. There aren’t thousands of carefully ordered prints, the type you can touch, but countless digital images captured from the ether on iPhone 56 or some other futuristic device.

Technology marches on.

So future Grandma takes the lede. The first picture is telling.

“Here’s a picture of breakfast.” Poached eggs on avocado toast and coffee.

Grandma has a penchant for the mundane.

She follows with 25 more photos of food, casseroles, birthday cakes, salads, tacos and maybe something exotic — like sushi and peanut butter.

Next, she displays a photo of herself in the bathroom mirror, taken at a high angle at arm’s length, followed by 12 more pictures in the exact same pose. They called them “selfies.” She’s trying to look sexy.

“What are you doing with your lips, Grandma?”

Never mind. She quickly moves on, scrolling a bit faster now.

She comes upon a series of pictures of her sitting in the driver’s seat of her car. It's the same thing—a dozen more selfies. This time, however, her smile is muted. She has more of a “why-am-I-doing-this” look. Somehow she looks thinner and without a blemish. And her hair is a different color. '

“Filters,” she says.

Then a picture of her in college with her boyfriend. Both have blue and pink hair. She quickly scrolls through.

“I was going through a phase.”

We move on and there are 120 pictures of her cat, “Mr. Biggles,” in various forms of repose. Here’s Mr. Biggles standing. Here’s Mr. Biggles sitting. Here‘s Mr. Biggles lying down. Here’s Mr. Biggles looking put off because he hasn’t been fed in three hours.

You get the picture.

**My cat, Loki: “My bowl is only half full!”**

Next is a picture of Granny, her sister Karen, and Uncle Joe. But Uncle Joe is blacked out. It turns out it’s Uncle Joe before the divorce. “Ugh!” says Granny. She’s got another name for him: “D***h**d.”

Then there are the Christmas pictures. In one, Grandma is holding up her special Christmas present … an espresso machine. Another shows her Mr. Biggles, wearing a knitted sweater and peering suspiciously at his new scratch pole.

The session ends with 150 photos of Granny, various friends and family, and all the places she’s visited … Westminster Abbey … the Great Wall … a cruise to the Arctic Circle … the Alps … Machu Picchu … the Louver … zip lining in Colorado … and sitting on a camel somewhere near Cairo.

Memories: Story of your life

Going through old photos tells more or less the story of your life. The good, the not-so-good, styles, trends, phases. Generally, I don’t photograph well. Somehow the aperture always makes me look constipated. Or that a Brahma bull is coming straight at me.

There are many, but most are ordinary, just throwaways. But some capture a time, a stop in the progression, and when paired up with others show how you’ve lived a life worth living.