Photos forever etched in your mind…Almost 8 years ago, the simplicity of a family photo forever changed how I saw the world.
Simple images of life.
The joys, hurts, the firsts, and lasts all forever timeless on paper.
As Ed Sheeran wrote in his famous song, ‘Photograph’, “…time forever frozen still”.
This timeless image is never more real than when it has been lost.
The Lost Photos of Joplin became the face of NDPR after the May 22, 2011 Joplin, MO tornado. Thousands of photographs lost waiting to be found.
Now, 8 years later, hundreds of volunteers, and pain-staking work to care for them, over 18,000 lost photos have gone home to 900 families.
My family made it through the tornado with their photos but none of their neighbors had a single photograph, they had no home. I learned that home was as much their photos as it was the walls that held them. Let me frame it…
The future of our communities is the past within our family photos. The images that remind us that we belong, forever etched in our minds. It brings us hope for the future.
If you look hard enough you find that we, as part of creation, are very similar. It’s a life changing revelation!