One of the reasons I love photography so much is because over time it has captured so much history. I can still remember going to the Sacramento Archives with my dad and grandparents looking over hundreds of photos taken in and around downtown searching for my great grandma Candelaria’s restaurant, La Mariposa that is now some other building. There was something so cool to me about pouring over photographs of decades past, looking at people, cars, dogs, life- frozen in time. I would look at a picture and try to animate it in my head, try to be there, like as if I was looking back on a memory- I was here once.
I think if I had to choose something to do for the rest of my life, it would be to work around these type of archives, they’re just so interesting. Its interesting to me that, sometime ago there were photographers like me who like to just goof around and take pictures of buildings, but now that those buildings are gone those pictures are written into history and are now very important photos. Photographers before me helped to build history. It totally fascinates me, which is probably why I love history so much- the photographs. Sacramento has these little books of photographs of select neighborhoods in their beginning stages, from gold rush era to present and its so interesting to me to actually SEE history. Whats even cooler is seeing those places now, seeing how they’ve changed or just stayed the same.
Somehow this week I stumbled across some old photos of Sac somewhere online (I can’t remember where now) but it got me wanting to flip through these photos again at the archives, but thanks to the digital age a lot of those photos are now online so I was browsing around and grabbed a couple of my favorite pictures, or pictures where I am familiar with the location now. Enjoy this little taste of Sacramento History.
What about you? Does your city have a similar online photo archive?
What are your favorite photos from your town history?
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