Such measures show that people have a need to remember their past and protect their memories. Pictures do help add certain details to memories, but they do not make up the memory as a whole. They function more as an aid, not a necessity, to our memories. Our memories are stored within ourselves, and are capable of being retrieved. They are brought up and triggered by the image on a picture, but they are not the pictures themselves.
Memories can exist in the form of mental as well as physical pictures.
To this day, even though my father wishes that he could hold the bag with his hands once again, he knows that this is impossible. He regrets with sadness having ever let it slip and losing it in the deep marshes of the rice fields. However, although my father lost the leather bag in its physical state, he has found the bag within himself, existing in the form of his memories. In retelling his stories, he symbolically pulls out the lost pictures from his own memory, allowing himself to relive the experiences, and allowing me to create my own pictures of his past. Without these memories, a picture image would be worthless.