Picture this: With family photos out of fashion – are we losing something precious?

Pictures used to be something a family could treasure or frame but now digital rules

WHAT makes a house a home? Many would answer "family photos", lined up on the mantelpiece, the windowsill, the piano. The "big moment" portraits of weddings, graduation, a new baby, a new car.

Glamorous aunts and pipe smoking dads. Dinner dance couples in formal dress. The family dog or cat often feature, along with holiday photos - often in a wooden, souvenir frame - of sun-tanned faces laughing in the sun. Grandparents in stiff, awkward poses and greatgrandparents in uniform, faded in sepia. Each one has a story. Every surface in the room is a silverframed, family history lesson. But not anymore.

Walk into a young family's home now and you'll be lucky if there's even a wedding photo on display.

Printed photographs are going out of fashion as the younger generation take snaps and selfies on their phones, posting them on Instagram, Facebook or simply texting them to their friends.

According to Ofcom's Communications Market Report, a fifth of adults surveyed claimed they were "hooked" on social media and less than 50 per cent of 16-24 year olds have a framed photo on display.

 

For most of the last century, photography was best left to the professionals

My first thought on reading this was how will crimes be solved in future police dramas? In almost everything from Agatha Christie to The Bill there is a moment when the star detective, left to wander round the room alone while the victim's wife goes off to make him a cup of tea picks up a framed photo from the mantelpiece, frowns - and bingo! Who is that, on the fishing trip with Brian? Back in the 1960s, Tommy Steele starred in the musical Half A Sixpence.

The standout song was Flash, Bang, Wallop. It contains the famous lines: "What a picture, what a photograph. Stick it in the family album!" But the album is going the way of the phone box and "snail mail" - writing and posting letters. No longer seen as necessary or relevant to modern life.

Before mobiles, we all had a photo in our wallet

 

For most of the last century, photography was best left to the professionals.

When I was born my parents took me to a local photographer's studio for a formal portrait. I am crawling across a fur rug. They were thrilled and they framed it. They got copies for the grandparents.

Families booked a professional photographer, for special events - a new baby, a special birthday, or a Christmas card.

The photographer knew about lighting and exposure. Everyone looked good.

Portable cameras were basic and although being given a camera as a present was hugely exciting, the results were often fuzzy.

But photos were important to me. I had one of my penpal, my first boyfriend, my dog and my favourite pop star beside my bed. I had written to ask Ricky Nelson for a photo. It came back, signed "Love, Ricky", probably written by some secretary but I didn't care. I thought he was singing for me.

Songwriters have always known that everyone at some time has pressed a photo of an unattainable love to a broken heart.

Joe Brown's song Picture Of You recalled a fleeting moment: "I saw you then, on the crest of a hill.

 

And I took a little picture of you."

In 10CC's haunting, I'm Not in Love they sing: "I put your picture upon the wall, it hides a nasty stain that's lying there."

Before mobiles, we all had a photo in our wallet.

But everything changed when digital cameras came along. They were fast, they were intelligent - automatically setting the exposure.

Suddenly we could all take a decent picture. Everyone was a photographer and the results of our efforts - portraits, landscapes, whales leaping, suns setting, birds flying - was blown up, printed out and proudly framed for all to see.

If you were stuck for a gift then, a picture frame was always acceptable because we all had lovely snaps to display.

I started to make a montage each year, arranging about 20 photos in a large frame. Each one was dated and I hung them in chronological order along the hall.

Then they went up the landing. And now they're in the loft. After 20 years we ran out of space.

We moved house two years ago and it took months to go through the drawers and albums of photos, so hard to ditch any of them but I tried just to keep the best.

Now I just have one wall which has framed photos that I love. Yes, they feature the grandchildren, my daughter's wedding on a riverboat and my son's in Sydney Harbour but there's also one of me riding on the back of Sting's motorbike, along the Irish coast (I was a music journalist in the 1970s) and also one of my dad, a Lancaster Bomber Command pilot.

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THE framed photo is always going to be an essential for the very old - not only wanting and needing to see familiar faces but also as an aide memoire and a conversation opener for visitors.

But photos need space to be displayed. If we don't have them anymore what's the point of a mantelpiece? And even though every grand piano I've ever seen has been covered in framed photos, who has a grand piano these days? And photo albums are fiddly things to put together.

Once we had those little triangular corner stickers that were supposed to hold the photos in place. Then there were the transparent, tacky sheets that simply pressed on the pictures, or Perspex slots - but they were always the wrong size.

So I can see why printing photos is fading out and I'm as guilty as anyone. I have albums and framed pictures of my children and their weddings but no albums for each of my four grandchildren. I can show them off by waving my phone at anyone who's passing.

In a world where your whole life can be stored on your phone what is the point of lugging around a hefty, bound album, which at most can probably hold 100 pictures? And yet part of me mourns the passing of the family album. Not transient or easily deleted like a selfie but a permanent record of your ancestry.

I have a Victorian family album. It's beautifully chosen and compiled, with cut-out spaces and painted decorations. Serious faces, formal poses and no jokey snaps. It is a precious heirloom. But it's not mine. I found it at an antiques fair and it made me sad that it was for sale. How could any family let this go? The inscription reads: "Presented to the Rev HJ Martin, on the anniversary of his natal day, with best wishes from a few friends. May 15th 1885."

Many of the photographs seem to have been taken in the Truro and Falmouth area. I would love to return it to his descendants.

Was the Rev Martin, a Cornish clergyman, one of your ancestors? Or maybe you know the family.

Write to me at the Daily Express, Number 10 Lower Thames Street, London EC3R 6EN, because this is one family album that should be treasured.