When the photographer Rachel LaCour Niesen lost her grandfather, in September of 2013, she memorialized him as many grieving relatives do in the modern age: by posting old family photos to social media. On Instagram, she displayed an image of Grandaddy Billy as a beaming young man in a Navy uniform, his boots tightly laced, standing on a paved pathway through a tidy lawn. In the comments field, Niesen jotted down some bits of biography (“The Virginia boy was sent to a naval base in California, where he met the love of his life, my grandmother Eleanor”) and explained that the photo, which she’d never seen before her grandfather died, had been unearthed from her grandmother’s jewelry box. “It was like discovering buried treasure,” she wrote.
The photo marked the beginning of Niesen’s project Save Family Photos, an online archive devoted to gathering images and stories from people around the world. Some of the pictures are informal snapshots, taken during the casual routines of family life—on a picnic, at the beach, in the station wagon. Others are posed studio portraits, marking the milestones of life and showing off the subjects at their polished best. To mark Mother’s Day this year, Niesen spent a week guest-hosting the New Yorker photo department’s Instagram account, posting images of family matriarchs along with moving reflections from their children and grandchildren. A selection of the photos is shown above; you can see more @newyorkerphoto.
