Photographs console us in the face of death and oblivion - it's their fundamental gift; they testify to what has been and what will be no more, and this testimony matters. It matters because oblivion is actually more than we can handle; because we get old and lose faith in the quick and competent gods of our childhood; because, unless we deny what our eyes see or turn ourselves into machinery, the future of everything is full of loss and disappearing; because we not only forget but we're also forgotten. Of course photographs matter. They remind us of that important time before the future fell upon us like a roof - when we were still handsome and lively, when our parents loved each other, and said so, and our best friend, wearing a foolish red bandanna, hadn't died. Nor is there anything false or hollow about this testimony or the melancholy it evokes, because all of it - within the great paradoxical realm of the photograph - happens to be true. To be human is to remember. That's why people standing on the lawn of their burning homes - their children safe from harm - cry for their lost photographs.