Importance of Photographs

For Joaquin, baby photographs mean that someone loves the child enough to want to preserve their memory. Not realizing there are childhood pictures of him, he assumes that no one loved him enough to have taken and saved his baby pictures. When he discovers that his mother had been collecting them for him in a safety deposit box, he realizes that she had loved him dearly, and that he was worth being remembered and cherished. Seeing his childhood photographs heals him, and he can accept that he deserves to be loved. When the whole family is together at his birthday and adoption party, a family portrait is taken that is meant to represent their unity as a family.