However, since I've been working with some old family photos on this research trip, I am glad to have a copy of my own. Where stately urban dwellings once stood, blank pavements and empty lots, broken only by tufts of grass, face an uncertain future in cities that were once full of hope and promise for earlier generations. In rejuvenated areas, new homes may stand on the spot where our ancestors began a new life in this country.
Few objects possess the ability to transcend time as old photographs do.
They are our single, most immediate link to the past, outliving memory and closing the distance of years as if no time had elapsed at all. In the split-second wink of a camera's eye, a photo refuses to let its subjects pass into memory but instead keeps them fresh and vibrant long after death. Such fragments of yesterday's society have overlapped into the present, merging imperceptibly with our current world just as articles from long ago outlived their usefulness to become the antiques of today. The author wisely acknowledges two additional resources, more comprehensive in nature for the wishing to learn more than this quite 'capable' primer. For years, I have loved this book for the author's careful descriptions of how to identify family members in old photos.