One hundred years of history looks down on me from the stairway wall in my house. A gallery of baby pictures, wedding photos and favorite snapshots hangs beside sepia-toned portraits of grandparents and great-grandparents, some stiff and formal in old-fashioned clothing. The images are dear and familiar, and each has the power to make me stop now and then to recall the sound of a voice or the warmth of an embrace.

Vintage photographs are gaining respect in the collecting world -- and not just the work of well-known photographers, but ordinary snapshots and studio portraits. Museum ephemera collections document the growth of the nation and the history of cities across the country through vintage photos.

When I was a child, the box of old family photos my grandmother kept in the drawer of her sideboard fascinated me. There were snapshots of men in uniform, girls wearing starched cotton dresses, and boys in short pants playing with dogs. There were photographs of my grandfather's childhood home in upstate New York covered in snow, something that as a child of the South I could only imagine. I would spend hours looking through the box, fascinated by the photos of my mother as a little girl and the scenes of my grandparents as young adults.

Later as I prowled through antique shops and flea markets, I was drawn to the photos of other people's lives. And I wondered how they came to be separated from the families that took them. The photos were usually cheap, sometimes sold by the box for a dollar or less. I bought them because I liked looking at the clothing and hairstyles as well as the furnishings in the rooms and the gardens outside. In a way, they were my paper dolls.

Once I picked up a turn-of the-last-century photograph of a theatrical production at an all-girl school. The cast stood on the stage in costume and I scanned the faces. When I saw the girl with dark hair and eyes standing to one side of the stage, I was stunned to see myself. She looked just like me. It wasn't a faint resemblance. She could have been my identical twin, born 50 years earlier.

I was a high school student at the time. I performed in school plays and with the community theater. I was able to connect with this young girl who looked so much like me and imagine her life. I've kept the photo all these years, and although I've aged and no longer look the same, and the girl on the stage is long gone, the image in the photograph is forever young.

One of my favorite vintage photographs is of a young couple. In the World War I-era portrait, the man is seated and his wife is standing behind him with her arms draped over his shoulders, her hands clasped across his chest. She is looking down at him, her face soft with love, and the handsome young man, his head resting against her breast, is gazing straight into the camera. The photograph is nearly 100 years old and has faded with time, but the love that shimmers in the photo is still electric.

As the world moves away from traditional photography and into the digital age, vintage photographs -- taken with bulky equipment and developed by hand using paper and chemicals -- are examples of an almost forgotten art.

Prices are increasing. You don't see many boxes of old pictures for a dollar anymore, but they are still affordable. Some collectors seek specific things like western scenes, children with pets, African American photographs and architecture. Others, like me, buy what captivates them, regardless of the subject.

Whether they are of people you've known and loved or strangers you've never met, old photographs can transport us to another time and place. They put a face on the past, keep us grounded in tradition, and delight the eye.