Nicosia, Cyprus. As photographs increasingly move to phones and cloud storage, physical family albums are becoming less common, raising questions about how future generations will revisit and understand family history.
Holly Kunst, research centre and collections manager at the Centre of Visual Arts and Research (CVAR), said traditional albums hold significance beyond the images they contain, reflecting the choices people make about how to represent their past.
Selection and family identity
Kunst said a photo album offers a selective representation of a person’s past, with the process of choosing images shaping how stories are understood.
“It’s not just how the person chose to represent their story, consciously or not, but it’s now how you will perceive it,” she said.
She recalled family gatherings in which relatives would revisit albums after periods apart. Kunst said the practice was less about entertainment than reinforcing identity through repeated shared memories.
For her family, reviewing old photographs after time apart helped strengthen their sense of connection, she said.
Personal stories and historical records
The selection of photographs can turn albums into more than collections of images, helping shape family narratives, according to Kunst.
She said she had formed impressions of people in photographs from only a few images and occasional names, dates or dedications. Albums do not provide perfect accounts of historical events, she said, but show what an individual valued at a particular moment.
By revisiting those images, viewers can share in the values reflected in the selection, Kunst said.
Everyday perspectives
Personal photographs and handwritten notes can also provide information absent from official records. Kunst said images in CVAR’s collections are often used to identify buildings and locations that have changed or been demolished.
She cited a photograph of dock workers in Larnaca with a note on its reverse describing friendly relations among people of different ethnicities despite divisions and conflict at the time.
Such photographs offer insight into the daily experiences of people whose lives unfold differently from major historical narratives, Kunst said. They can help show what people were thinking and feeling at a particular time when viewed alongside the broader historical context.
