Historic Photos and Facebook

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One of the reasons for which I keep using Facebook has to do with peoples’ sharing of old photos, paintings, sketches and more. I love to see photos of Nyon, Morges, Neuchatel Lausanne and other places through time.

Recently I saw a photo of La Dole with a group of children skiing before the Doppler radar "boule" was installed as well as old photos of the Little Red Train as locals call it. I saw a photo of the steam train that connected Divonne to Nyon before it was removed to make way for the motorway. Part of that line is still used by Landi for farm produce. The rest of it is used as a voie verte for cyclists and walkers to enjoy a path away from cars and other traffic.

In these photos we also see Nyon before La Combe was built, the Place Perdtemps before the addition of the parking, the lake side when there was no parking by the debarcadère and so much more.

There are photos of Geneva when the lake was covered with ice as well as Neuchatel in the same situation. It’s a nice journey into a world with 4 billion or fewer human beings in some cases. You see the "arc lémanique" before the A1 motorway was built.

There is value in looking at old photos. The value is seeing how places have improved, or become worse, and of remembering different ages and eras. The pre-car era, the car era, the era of shopping centres, of densification and more.

Villages are changing a lot. As I go for my daily walks I see buildings being torn down or gutted, and then new buildings come up, or in other cases they are renovated. What was once a house with a garden with one family and trees becomes attached houses with a large parking space and barely any grass.

It’s also nice to see Flon when it was a valley with a bridge. Today it’s entirely covered in tarmac.

In french there is the expression "Devoir de mémoires", the responsability of remembering. Such groups fulfil that need. I think they should spread to the Fediverse, for posterity.