The greatest gift of all

After a weekend of organising, backing up and printing archives of photos from the last year, I've just returned home from seeing Ciudad de los fotografos, a highly recommended documentary about the photographers and photojournalists who documented the demonstrations, protests and everyday lives of the Chilean people under the Pinochet regime.

Needless to say, the film got me thinking about just how valuable, how meaningful, how powerful a photograph can be. Photos have the unique ability to express emotion far better than words, to transport us into a realm in which we can smell the smells, hear the sounds and remember the feel of everything around us at that moment in which the photo was taken. Would we really remember our childhoods if it weren't for the pictures?

The fact that one of the women in the film talked about how they hadn't the money even to eat, but that they sacrificed a week's pay just to have their one and only family picture taken also reminded me of how much we take photographs for granted. In a day an age when we take 1400 digital pictures during a single vacation, download them onto a computer and quickly forget about them, it's ever so easy to forget that in many places, having a single print of one's family, one's loved ones or of oneself remains but a dream. In fact, it reminds me of my time in Manila and with my newfound friend-cum-guide Marc, who's eyes were as big as a little kid's at Christmas when I told him I could send him a picture of himself by email. I'm ashamed to say I neglected to scribble his address down as he was shouting it to me across the departure lounge at the airport and thus now cannot give him that one, single picture that surely would have made his year.

While certainly nothing can ever replace what is truly the greatest gift of all - quality time with friends and loved ones and the unconditional love and support between them, photos must surely come in a close second, as keepers of the memories marking our humanity.