The App Golden Memories combines historical expertise and sensibility with technological progress and societal responsibility. It stimulates intergenerational dialogue in a fascinating way, it allows to playfully and creatively rediscover visual treasures of family history, and it shows excellently how technology in transition can enrich our personal lives.

We all have golden memories. But what if through mental disorder such as caused by dementia you do lose touch with your memories? This is one of the most frightening things that can happen to a person. How to reach out to these people? How to retrieve those memories? Photography can help. Family photographs trigger memories, and when activated they bring back past events. The App Golden Memories aims for that: to activate the brain, to reach into the deeper layers of the subconscious, the depths where memories are stored by means of family photos and to bring to the surface what lies dormant.

I always thought that I would to the grave convinced that the visual arts -- including photography of course -- are not and should never be "at the service of another discipline". It is as if I had Stieglitz always poised on my right shoulder acting as my conscience in Esthetics. GOLDEN MEMORIES prompts me to reconsider my position seriously. Here is a utilitarian application of vernacular photography that is, at the same time, noble because it is so humane. It would be hard to think of a more praiseworthy purpose of the visual medium.