Photo Album

Old photo albums
We miss them in the digital age
Those bulky dossiers
Dark coloured pages
Festooned with corner fixings
Holding our life history
And Large files of plastic folders
Stuffed with printed photos
Sometimes tidy
Often chaotic

And yet it’s all there
Baby Joan’s first tottering step
Tom and Ian cavorting in the paddling pool
“Our home” in the 1950’s
Looking ramshackle
But why did we ever leave?
Grandpa’s birthday
In his chair, a little tipsy
Time for a snooze
Caught him unaware

But times move on
Snapping no longer limited to
A Kodak or Ilford spool
Of 24 or 36
And then the glories of colour!
Almost dazzling
But you still had to wait
Until your creations
Returned from the processor
Unless you had your own darkroom

Now all this restriction and mystery is gone
Infinite snapping, instant results
Cameras now high-powered computers
Phones not just for your ears but for your eyes
Abundant selfies for the self-obsessed
But where are the photo albums of today?
Not in the book but in the cloud
More images than ever for the world to see
No paper corners to hold our prints
Our images released to all the world

Ken Fisher