A photograph taken for identification can later become a family’s most treasured portrait.

A photograph taken for a document can become the one a family keeps. It was made for a clerk, with no thought of memory, and precisely because it was unposed and ordinary it holds a face nobody was performing. Meaning attaches itself later, without regard for why the picture was taken.

This is a reason to keep the unremarkable images. The considered portraits are rarely the ones that matter in twenty years. Take pictures of ordinary days, of the kitchen and the car and the face not ready, and keep them somewhere durable. You cannot know now which one will end up doing the work.