The Museum of Lost Memories: the Extraordinary, Ordinary History of the everyday

“Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it” by L.M Montgomery, David told me, is one of his favourite quotes.

Since finding a bucket of old photos in a Brooklyn thrift shop in 2017, David has been buying cameras, undeveloped film, photo albums, letters, and family portraits from stores all over America. Developing, curating, and returning the misplaced moments has become his passion project. He calls his work the ‘Museum of Lost Memories’.

‘Open the doors and walk in. Take a deep breath through your nose. It smells like your grandparent’s house. There are paintings on the walls in gold frames and a dusty record player with foreign vinyl. This is the place where old memories live.’

The Museum of Lost Memories is a project dedicated to the return and preservation of lost photographs, home movies, letters, and more. As his own family’s ‘documentarian’ he told me, he hopes the project also serves as a reminder and inspiration to preserve one’s own memories and prevent them from becoming lost.

David’s interests and connection to the past make the museum a project he was born to do. ‘Everything has a story, and I find myself imagining the stories of all old things’, he knew, he said, that he had to do something to return or at least preserve the thousands of memories found in thrift stores and lost to time or clear-outs. We bonded over getting choked up at antique shops. ‘When I see a vintage beer can at a thrift store, I think about friends catching up over a drink. When I see old jewellery, I think about someone gifting it to a loved one.’ David's empathy for the past makes the museum feel like a sanctuary for the memories he documents, for some, a final resting place.

Combining his affinity for documenting personal memories, his love of vintage things, and his work as a social media manager; the museum of lost memories Instagram account was born at the end of 2020 when he posted the first memory. The account has become a huge community dedicated to the returning and tracking of memories and moments from over the world. He has returned thousands of memories to dozens of families with the help of his following. They check archives, using their knowledge of languages, geography, and personal experiences to piece together where the memories and the people in them are from. The comments on his posts are filled with information, translations, and interpretations of information in the photograph. Some people even recognise themselves. “That’s me!!! That’s my wedding!!!” comments someone on a post of a 2009 disposable bought on Long Island that David developed. This woman wouldn’t have even known the photos existed before that, making them memories, not just photographs.

His most astounding find and testament to the commitment of his followers was he told me, a roll of film that contained a note reading “These were taken in April 1943. Freidman”. He and his followers used ‘lamp posts to identify a specific year, a newspaper title to note the language spoken by the family, and a blurry street sign to mark the town where the pictures were taken.’ After piecing together information over time and space, the family was identified using a heritage website. The 80-year-old memories were returned to the owners.

Social media has been a powerful tool for David and his project, he uses all of them to diversify and broaden his community. Not only does it allow communication across countries, and community across borders, it also is a place to store photos and memories in a sort of permanent space. “Social media can be a great tool to document our memories, in fact, after one of my hard drives broke I was able to save some of the photographs that I lost because I uploaded them to Facebook years before” confessed David. He now uses it to give the same favour to strangers.

The ability to document personal and domestic history is a significant attribute of social media – and the project. The first goal of the museum is to return the memories to their original owners, but unfortunately, that isn’t always possible. The secondary goal of the museum is to preserve the lost memories “It is extremely important to preserve the history of everyday people!” David talks about his work in the sense of immortalisation, being able to document the memories allows them to live on in some sort of space or consciousness.

Currently only operating in America, David hopes to expand the project and has a group of collectors launching this month to help him with his work. He hopes that one day there will be Museum of Lost Memories outposts all over the world.

If we die twice, once on our deathbed, and lastly when we are forgotten by the world, David is helping people and their ordinary, extraordinary existence live forever.

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