In an age of SMS shorthand and an online world dominated by social media, the lure of nostalgia seems more compelling than ever.

A must-visit website showcasing photography’s ability to document life’s important memories is Dear Photograph.

The site provides a potent mix of the past and present by demonstrating a photograph’s ability to preserve our personal stories and legacies – and the human connections that give them meaning.

The principle is simple: visitors to the site submit photographs of old photographs, held up against the original scene, captioning them with brief, often emotive notes to the original image explaining what the photograph means to them.

One example from the site:

Dear Photograph,
Dad never took a picture of me, ever.
Then I noticed his reflection in the glass.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad.
Anonymous

The poignant intimacy of many of the captions really pulls at the heartstrings, and I admit to being misty-eyed on more than one occasion while browsing the site’s archive!

As The New Yorker said,

The project is a powerful reminder that digital photos can’t ever quite duplicate how it feels to hold a timeworn, sun-bleached, wrinkled old family photo in your hand.

I think the concept would make for a really meaningful photographic essay based on one’s own faded family albums.

Do you have a special photograph from your past that you’d like to transform into a Dear Photograph?