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How Printed Photos Help Families Grieve
Published 9/22/26
"My mother passed away very suddenly. It killed my father and broke my heart. I made a book with some of our favorite memories over the years and it was the first time I saw my dad smile and laugh."
That response came from one family in a survey of more than 15,000. It wasn’t unusual. It was the pattern.
When Chatbooks conducted its 2025 Family Memory Report (link) — a two-phase study of more than 15,000 families — researchers expected to hear about birthday parties and beach vacations. Instead, over 70% of responses about how photos influence the way families remember their story centered on death, loss, and grief. That wasn’t a finding anyone set out to find. It’s simply what families kept saying, unprompted, when asked what photos mean to them.
91%
Reported finding comfort and peace in photos after losing someone.
73%
named loss and remembrance as the memories that helped them cope
85%
said photos helped them remember happy times, not sad ones
850+
respondents mentioned the loss of a grandparent
The Numbers Behind the Finding
Of the more than 15,000 families surveyed, 91% reported finding comfort and peace in photos after losing someone. More than 850 respondents specifically mentioned the loss of a grandparent. When families were asked what memories helped them cope with challenges, the most common response — at 73% — was loss and remembrance. And 85% said photos helped them remember happy times rather than sad ones during grief.
The finding that emerged most powerfully across the data: photos serve as a bridge between grief and healing. They allow families to shift focus from the pain of loss to gratitude for the time spent together. Rather than dwelling on how someone died, photos help families celebrate how they lived.
What Families Actually Said
The most instructive data isn’t the percentages — it’s the words families used.
“After my grandmother passed, I spent a whole weekend going through her photo albums. I found pictures of people I’d never met but who shaped my family. It felt like meeting them.”
“We lost our son at 6 months old. The Chatbook I had already made of his first weeks is the most important thing I own.”
Across hundreds of responses, the same phrases appeared again and again: “kept their memory alive,” “helped us smile through the sadness,” “reminded us of the good not the bad.”
Three Patterns the Research Revealed
1
Funerals as a gathering point
Hundreds of respondents mentioned creating photo boards, slideshows, or memory books specifically for funerals. The act of gathering and organizing photos became a healing ritual in itself — a way for families to tell a story together, surface forgotten memories, and find laughter in the midst of grief.
2
Photos for children who never met
A recurring theme: parents using printed photos to help young children know grandparents, aunts, uncles, or siblings who died before the child was born or while very young. Photos became a way to build a relationship across time.
3
Resilience through remembering
Many families described how seeing photos from previous difficult times reminded them that they had survived before. Photos became proof — evidence that hard seasons end.
Where printed photos show up in hard times
Physical photos displayed at funerals
84%
Kept printed photos at a bedside during illness
67%
Prefer physical photo books during difficult times
58%
Why Physical Prints Carry Particular Weight in Grief
The 2025 research builds on findings from Chatbooks’ earlier 2019 Printed Photo Impact Study (link), conducted with university psychology researchers and more than 15,591 participants. Together, the two studies point to something consistent: physical photos carry emotional weight that digital files don’t replicate in the same way.
In the 2025 research, 58% of respondents said they prefer physical photo books during difficult times. 67% reported keeping printed photos at bedsides during illness. 84% said physical photos are displayed at funerals.
There’s something about the tangibility of a printed photo — the ability to hold it, pass it around a room, press it into someone’s hands — that digital files on a screen simply don’t offer.
The Photo You Print Today
No one makes a photo book thinking about grief. You make it because your kid did something funny, or because you went on a trip, or because it was Tuesday and the light was good.
But the book you make on a Tuesday might be the one someone holds at a hospital bedside ten years from now. It might be the one your grandchildren flip through to know what you looked like when you laughed. It might be the first thing someone reaches for on the worst day of their life.
That’s what 15,000 families told us. Not that photos are nice to have. That photos carried them through.
*Data cited from the Chatbooks 2025 Family Memory Report, a two-phase study comprising qualitative interviews and a quantitative survey of more than 15,000 families. Methodology available at chatbooks.com/research/family-memory-report-2025 (link).*
