In my planner, I carry around pictures of friends, family, and memorable events. These pictures are tactile representations of memories that I have. For instance, I have a photograph of my now eleven year old sister. In this picture, she smiles with an air of happiness that reminds me of the many hours we spent together trying to kill Bowser in Super Mario Brothers, how we spent late hours reading together during the summer before I left for college, and how she cried when I finally left. This picture is the only tangible memory I have with me of my sister.
Pictures are material representations or images of certain moments in time.
Their paper and plastic nature makes them tactile, a sort of static representation on paper. Their palpability helps to illustrate a memory, and serves as a sort of hand held window in time. Pictures often illustrate memories that would have otherwise been seemingly forgotten, but can be refreshed by a mere glance of a photo. Back home, I occasionally flip through our photo albums and am reminded of experiences like vacations to Hawaii and California, how excited my face looked on Christmas morning, and how my brother starred in an elementary school musical dressed as a giant bug. Like my family, many families own scrapbooks or photo albums that keep and store their pictures as a means of preservation.