Thanks to today's digital camera technology, this is the Age of Images. They are all around us and we constantly add to them with our digital cameras which are built into our phones, computers, even key-rings and ballpoint pens.
When today's young people put their feet up and reminisce about their youth, they can do so with the aid of hundreds of images which record almost everything they did (and said) - always provided that by then the medium needed to project them still exists. Remember reel-to-reel tapes, colour slides, and BETAMAX videos?
I ain't so lucky as there are no more than a handful of photos to chronicle my childhood and youth. After the earliest-known picture of me (as shown above), there is another one taken three years (and nine months) later in Augustastraße in Berlin in which I hold a stuffed dog ...
You can always recognise a German: the only race on the planet to wear sandals AND socks ☺
... then my first day at school ...
... my last day at school ...
... and a couple more in between.
And that's it!!! Not a single pictorial record of my articled years, my migration to Australia and the first couple of years in a new country.
It wasn't just the price of the camera itself; it was the cost of the films and the processing and printing. And, of course, one never quite knew if the pictures would turn out all right.
How much easier and quicker it is today with instant images that don't cost anything. Three cheers for digital photography!
Hip hip hooray!
