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memories

Joy

There are over 30 years between these amazing before-and-after photos.

"It's important for me for my photography to make people smile."

All photos by Chris Porsz/REX/Shutterstock.

Before and after photos separated by 30 years.

This article originally appeared on 11.30.16


Chris Porsz was tired of studying sociology.

As a university student in the 1970s, he found the talk of economics and statistics completely mind-numbing. So instead, he says, he roamed the streets of his hometown of Peterborough, England, with a camera in hand, snapping pictures of the people he met and listening to their stories. To him, it was a far better way to understand the world.

He always looked for the most eccentric people he could find, anyone who stood out from the crowd. Sometimes he'd snap a single picture of that person and walk away. Other times he'd have lengthy conversations with these strangers.

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When Abby Van Metre turned 18, she wanted an iPhone. Instead, she got ... a box?

She remembers plopping down on the living room floor of her Cedar Rapids, Iowa, home a few days after her birthday, next to her dog, and staring at the aged brown container. It had been her great-great-aunt's jewelry box. It was over 100 years old and had been passed down to Abby's grandma and, now, to Abby.

But she didn't know what was inside.

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11 emotional, hilarious, and moving photos from the Museum of Broken Relationships.

A new museum in L.A. is helping people process their broken relationships by treating objects with sentimental value like art.

After she broke up with her boyfriend, this woman says she immediately removed her breast implants.

Her boyfriend had convinced her to get them, and she didn't like them much anyway. But she kept those implants in a drawer as a memory, anyway, thinking that someday she'd figure out what to do with them. When she heard about The Museum of Broken Relationships, she knew she'd found the perfect place.

This heart-wrenching confession from an anonymous donor is one of hundreds of objects and stories sent to the Museum of Broken Relationships every month.

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Here is what I remember: most of it. The day itself, I mean. The interruption of class, the announcement by the fumbling English teacher, the crowding at the window, the black cloud already invading the skyline.

I remember the snarky, oblivious comments — my own, especially. The teachers herded everyone to the school rooftop to sort us into homerooms and take count of where everyone was.

I remember the first few parents arriving, to our surprise, followed by the announcement that students would not be released from school until a parent — anybody’s parent — signed them out. And then my own parents arrived in a flurry, scooping up as many of the downtown kids as they could find, sweeping us all out to the street, seeing a man with the radio walkie-talkie on his shoulder as if we were in another decade. I remember my father’s van becoming a caravan for other people’s children, the way we dropped them off one by one to grateful parents, how sad I was to watch them leave.

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