What Old Photographs Taught Me about Memory, Privilege, and the Histories We Keep
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By Rahul Pradhan
29 June 2026
Photographs from the Alyen Foning collection in the process of being digitised.
There is something almost sacred about opening a box of old photographs.
Before you see a single face, you notice the smell, a faint scent of aged paper, dust, and time. Then comes the careful unfolding of albums whose pages have survived decades. Every photograph asks you to slow down. Every crease, handwritten note, and faded edge carries a history waiting to be understood.
During my time at the Confluence Collective, those boxes became part of my everyday work. I spent my days scanning photographs, documenting details, and helping preserve family collections. The work was methodical, almost quiet. Yet somewhere between metadata and memories, I realised I wasn't simply digitising photographs. I was spending time with lives I had never known.
One collection that stayed with me belonged to the Foning family of Kalimpong.
Their albums contained generations of carefully preserved memories: studio portraits, family gatherings, celebrations, educational milestones, holidays, and everyday moments. There were photographs taken in front of beautiful homes, beside cars, alongside friends from different backgrounds, and images of family members in decorated police and military uniforms. One photograph showed a woman on a stage, seemingly in the middle of a performance. I don't know who she was or what occasion it marked, but it suggested a life in which artistic expression, too, was something worth remembering.
There was one photograph that particularly fascinated me: a view of the Lotus Temple while it was still under construction. I had seen the completed monument countless times, but never imagined what it looked like before it became an icon. It reminded me that archives preserve not only what endures, but also the forgotten beginnings that time often erases.
As we catalogued the collection, we paid close attention to every detail. Many photographs had names, dates, or places written on the back. Others offered only visual clues. Sometimes, identifying a location became a collaborative exercise, with everyone examining tiny details hidden within the frame. In one instance, I noticed the letters "WB" on the cap badge of a uniformed officer, helping identify it as part of the West Bengal Police. It was a small observation, but one that reinforced how
photographs often reveal their stories only to those willing to look closely.
Yet as I worked through these albums, I found myself thinking about another family.
My own.
Or, more specifically, my mother's childhood in Soureni Basti, Mirik in the Darjeeling district.
Her childhood has survived almost entirely through memory.
She speaks of waking up at three or four in the morning, long before school began. Before opening a textbook, there was work to be done-feeding livestock, cleaning sheds, helping manage the household, caring for younger siblings, and ensuring everyone was ready before making the journey to school herself. Education was not simply about attending classes. It came after hours of labour that were essential to the family's survival.
When I compare those stories with the albums I was digitising, the contrast becomes impossible to ignore.
One family preserved hundreds of photographs across generations.
The other preserved almost none.
Not because their memories mattered any less, but because photography itself was a luxury. Owning a camera, paying for film, or visiting a studio simply wasn't part of everyday life for many working-class families. In my mother's family, only a handful of photographs exist today. Even those few have become difficult to identify. Sometimes, the siblings themselves struggle to recognise who appears in a particular image.
That absence stayed with me.
We often think of privilege in terms of wealth or education, but it also shapes what survives. It determines whose birthdays are photographed, whose graduations are documented, whose homes become part of family history, and whose stories remain dependent on fading memory alone.
Archiving made me realise that photographs are not simply records of the past. They are also evidence of access, of time, resources, and the opportunity to preserve ordinary life.
At the same time, it reminded me that history is never complete.
Every organised album exists alongside countless lives that were never photographed. Every carefully labelled portrait exists beside memories carried only through conversation. Neither is more meaningful than the other, but one is far easier for future generations to inherit.
When we preserve photographs, we are not only protecting images. We are protecting context, identity, and fragments of everyday life that might otherwise disappear.
What surprised me most was how much this experience changed my own perspective.
I began the project expecting to learn about archival practices, metadata, and digitisation.
Instead, I left thinking about memory.
About privilege.
About accessibility.
And about how something as ordinary as a family photograph can quietly reveal the social history of an entire generation.
Sometimes, the most powerful stories are not found in museums or history books.
Sometimes, they are waiting inside an old family album.
Rahul Pradhan writes about memory, women's lives, and the social histories of the Eastern Himalayas. His work is rooted in lived experiences and cultural histories, while his enduring interest lies in entertainment journalism. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Mass Communication and Journalism from St. Joseph's College, Darjeeling, and is currently pursuing a PG Diploma in Digital Media & Online Journalism at Apeejay Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi. Outside writing, he is drawn to photography, cinema, and acting.
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