This may seem like a sad story because it begins with a boy with few memories of his father, who died when he was 7 years old. It’s why Mitch Goldstone cherishes his only picture with his dad — a snapshot at Disneyland taken during the late 1960s, when the concept of people reflexively reaching for smartphone cameras in their pockets could only happen in Tomorrowland.
But this story, and the personal stories that follow, aren’t sad at all. And a half-century later and more, Goldstone has done something with that memory.
He is pursuing a career focused on the joy of rediscovery. He and his longtime partner, Carl Berman, run ScanMyPhotos, part of a niche industry that specializes in turning the billions of analog slides, undeveloped negatives and printed pictures taken in the pre-smartphone era into digital treasure chests filled with memories that had been forgotten.
“There’s nothing else like it, there are so few businesses doing something that makes people cry when they get the product back,” Goldstone says. “Fortunately, they are usually happy tears.”