Japanese holiday memories discarded.
In a pile of rubbish on an archaeological site a couple of years back I found a number of slides damaged by fire, water, mould and dirt. They are paper mounts without any labelling except for some faint numbers written in red ink. Someone's holiday photos of their trip to Japan. Lost in a turf-out either by accident, or because they didn't care anymore. The tangible record of a life, discarded and forgotten except for what the stranger sees. Slides are obsolete, but they survive in biscuit tins and filing cabinets, have become a commodity traded for nostalgic value or recycling, or a museum object , or more hopefully, to be treasured as family heirlooms and carefully sorted and identified. Their historical value is well recognised, because they survive the events and the people who made them and which they record. They are transferable to new media , but still remain as things. Our Japanese holiday photos probably go back to the 1960s or maybe earlier....