The first post is dedicated to my father. Michael Antkowski, a person I love more dearly than words can express. As I left behind the place I had called home for almost 31 years, days before my 31st birthday, to follow my heart, as far as it would take me, a vast ocean away, he said to me "absence makes the heart grow fonder".

My father sent me the above picture. I received it this morning. Something that I have enjoyed about cross-continental communication with loved ones is that although the time difference creates a challenge to talk, I look forward to the early mornings, when I often find messages from family and friends in my inbox, gifts in the form of notes and pictures, which they sent at the end of the day, and I received at the beginning of mine.

The first post is also dedicated to the woman pictured above. Sabina Markowska, my great-grandmother. At the age of 2, she immigrated from Poland to the United States. A person I do not know, but with whom I share a bloodline. I am currently physically closer to the land where she was born than she was when she died. This morning when I received this photo, I stared at it for a long time, on my phone. I showed it to my husband and he told me that I look like her, that I have her neck and her posture.

I found myself returning to the photo throughout the day. I wanted to take a closer look. I saved it to my computer and just stared at it. I wondered when it was taken, where is was taken. What the photographer told her to look at, because she stares quietly and almost blankly ahead. She is only slightly smiling. I also wondered how my father acquired this photo, what size it is, wishing I could hold it and bring it closer to my eyes.

And with that I thought, not for the first time, but with more immediacy, about the fleeting physicality of photographs. Yes, this is a digital facsimile of a photograph and in theory, it can be preserved forever. But who is going to save it? Who is going to continuously update its format, or print it on archival paper, pulling it out of a shoebox every now and then, just to make sure it's there, and put it into someone's hands, so that she can pull it closer to her eyes and experience it for herself?

Photographs are disappearing from the physical world. In digital form, of course, they offer so much; that requires no support or justification. But the lack of analog photographs keeps us from accessing something which cannot be tendered through pixels and plasma. Thankfully, we can share these antiquities by scanning and sending them, but they are, in their original form, physical objects that were created with attention and intention. They are the tangible remains of someone or something that is, or will be, intangible.

My plan for this blog is to share this digital platform to post scans of physical photographs, and for each image, which is physically and deliberately selected, scanned and posted, to occupy a visual space where others can view it, perhaps read its story, and imagine its existence in the physical world.