For the last several years, thanks to social media, people have valued photos for the attention they immediately garner when shared. The value of a photo as a piece of history, or a memory, while once primary, has been mostly relegated to a relative afterthought.
When barriers to sharing were far higher, in the days before social media, much more of the aggregate value of photos came in the form of long-term memory aids for people or within small groups and families.
