I’ve kept them and look at them every now and again to cheer myself up, I like seeing how far I’ve come

I was given a curated book full of them, it was well intentioned and I do appreciate the effort my mum put into it, but making the title “Deadname to Sasha” fucking stings lol

It’s frankly next to impossible for me to look through, lots of dysphoric photos and the photos of me young just make me resentful of having gone through first puberty, my body is so damaged…

It just sits there, but I’ll probably never let anyone look at it including myself

I’d go the route of archive and revisit if you feel you can some number of years from now. Most of my friend group growing up hated getting photographed, so I don’t have a huge portfolio. That said now that I am married and have started to have kids it is nice to be able to look at photos with my partner.

One of my close friends I’ve known since grade school had started HRT within the last year or so. Every now and then she sends selfies of where she is at and how far she came from. For her the old pictures appear to be a point of pride, but I can’t say how many she might have gotten rid privately. Not my place to pry.

I still hate a number of photos from when I had less exposure to the world, but a good number of photos are of a happy kid raising geese or playing with their cousins.

From my own experience I’d say I regret deleting/destroying some photos, and past me had been too critical of myself to the point that a lot of memories were never documented. That said some photos are just so opposed to who I am now that they did not justify being preserved any longer.

Yes, archiving them somewhere. I think this is highly individual. For me, right now, I feel like there can be catharsis looking back at those old photos. When I was first transitioning, especially a few months into HRT, it was a major confirmation for me that looking at old photos of me and comparing them to how I looked now I could distinctly tell the old photos were not “me”, that I couldn’t recognize them as myself in the photo, it looks like a stranger (even though I felt not all that much had changed, merely the presence of a denial / neglect beard and masculine clothes, etc. in those old photos were enough to create that distance).

I wouldn’t want anyone else to have photos of me, though. I think I would want to control when and under what circumstances I come across them. (That has always been true, but now I feel more justified in that position, whereas before I think people just thought it was something unusual or unhealthy about me.)

can’t worry about old photos if you never let anyone take photos of you

hecc you, past me >:3

They stop stinging after a while. I mean, you might never feel great about them, but for me at least, the urge to burn them in a fire went away after a few years. Now, I don’t bring them up for no reason, but if it’s relevant, I’m happy to bring out an old photo of me pre transition

Which is to say, keep them. You can’t unthrow them away later. But you can simply never look at them again, even if you keep them

Use them for transition timelines to make girls envy me

Occasionally I get jump scared by them when Google Photos is like “remember when you were an ugly boy?” and feel dysphoric over it. But when I control when/who sees the photos, I’m pretty fine with it at this point. He doesn’t even really look like me, to quote an ex I awkwardly ran into and hadn’t yet come out to, I “look like a woman that sort of resembles [boy me]”.

I was recently home and I put a sharpie censor bar across my chest in an old photo that was on my parents fridge. Other than that I try not to interact much with them.

I mainly put them somewhere I can’t find them.

I have a lot of burning to do, never thought of it.

i just dont let people take photos of me :3

I actually just have them standing around