Continuing the Album
October 1st, 2025
Writer: Emma Weiss
Editor: Penny Walke
A photo is more than a second in time; it is a fleeting moment of a memory preserved forever. Each image is a fragment of a larger story, holding pieces of joy, love, and passion within its frame. Unlike moments, photos live forever, allowing us to revisit the past and feel emotions frozen in time.
In a small brown cabinet in my bedroom at my grandparents’ house lay piles and piles of thick black photo albums. When I was little, I’d laugh at the photos of my grandpa, shirtless, playing flag football at camp. But as I got older, I started asking questions, piecing together these stories of his childhood, our family tree, and his lived experiences. The earliest photo albums weren’t my grandpa’s doing; they were his father's. Photos were left scattered, unorganized, and out of order, making it difficult to read them as a story..
But the albums my grandpa created himself were different. They began with his relationship with my grandma. The first photo shows them at the start: my grandma, just 16, in a summer dress and a bright headband pushing back her thick brown hair; my grandpa, with his dark complexion, has his arm around her. It was the beginning of a love that would last a lifetime. Later pages show silly moments at the beach, burying my grandpa in the sand, popping open a champagne bottle, laughing together through life. Young love, and the start of their story, radiate from those images captured in time.
Other black photo albums in the bedroom captured their worldly travels. It wasn’t the Taj Mahal or the Eiffel Tower that drew me in, but rather the photos of my grandma full of admiration and life. It was the shots of them together in the South African rainforest. The shots of them on a boat in the Venice canals. Love bursts out of those images; I could feel it then, and I still feel it now.
This summer, I returned to my grandparents’ home after my grandpa passed away. I opened the albums I cherished so dearly as a kid, seeing their love alive in the stillness of those images, and thought, ‘Why don’t I do this? Why don’t I start taking photos and creating albums documenting my happiness as a young adult?’ The following week, I bought a film camera at a vintage market. Since that day, I have strived to capture the little moments of joy, taking photos of my friends at dinners, before going out, or just hanging around, making these memories last forever.
I hope to continue these albums the way my grandpa did. I want to capture the milestone of getting my first apartment, the pride of running my first marathon, the joy of getting married, and the excitement of traveling the world. When I start a family, I want that new chapter of life to be captured. These albums won’t just be for me; they’ll be for my future kids and grandkids, and generations following. I want them to flip through the pages and see my life’s moments, to feel my memories alive in front of them, just as I felt my grandparents’ love living on through their photos.
