Vintage vs. Modern

I take after my dad.  Completely.  Wholly.  Unabashedly.  We are both verging on obsessive/compulsive about preserving memories: journals, photographs, videos, scrapbooks (more me than my dad on this one, I admit), speeches, art/school projects, and whatever other meaningful tidbits we accumulate along the way through this exciting life of ours.

What I have noticed lately, however, is this constant struggle between the vintage and modern world.  It can be noted in practically every facet of life.  While we go forward with bounding advancements in the fields of technology and medicine, clothing trends tell a completely different story; kitchens are remodeled with modern appliances, fixtures, and cabinetry made to look retro/vintage; and hair styles mimic the 30's starlets.  On the flip-side, there are clothes and hairdos so radical as can only belong to this new millennium and home renovation is sometimes so sleek and streamlined that one feels as though they've stepped 100 years into the future.

As a photographer and purveyor of memory, I experience this battle of the decades daily as I pour over old family photos (taken almost exclusively by my dear father) and grapple against my desire to edit every single picture I now take with a worn sort of vibe and coloring.  There is something so poignant about aged photos, vintage apparel, and antique furniture and automobiles.  For me, these blasts from the past embody everything that photography attempts to accomplish - mainly the preservation of memory.  They stir something in me.  They speak to me.  The modern world seems so cold, impersonal, and distant.  The vintage seems to whisper of barefoot, apron-clad prairie women sweating lovingly over delicious home-cooked meals prepared on epic scales for husbands and farmhands alike.  The vintage carries with it the promise of hours and hours of quiet speculation of days gone by and unique people long since deceased.  The vintage evokes collective, historical memory and ties generations together the way modern accoutrements never will.

What about you?  Are you more of a vintage person or modern?  Maybe a bit of both worlds?