Eighteen years earlier, she held her arm because she was a child. Eighteen years later he did it again, but this time to tell all the time spent together.
In 2000, Dennis Roach was living one of the important days of his youth: his diploma at Huntsville High School, Texas.
To remember that moment he chose to take pictures with his daughter Tori, still in bands. He wore toga and touch, she was tight in her arms.
At the time it was simply a family photograph. No one could imagine that the shot would have a second chapter.
Time passed and that little girl grew up. Then, in May 2018, he also arrived for Tori on graduation day.
The school was the same attended by his father eighteen years earlier: Huntsville High School.
And right then Tori had an idea.
He took that old photograph and decided to recreate it.
This time she was wearing toga and touch. Dennis, however, returned to do what he had done when his daughter was still a newborn: he took her in his arms in front of the camera.
Two almost specular images, separated for eighteen years.
Tori published them together with a few words: 18 years later.
The simplicity of that comparison struck thousands of people, because it showed something that normally we cannot see: time.
In the first photograph there is a father at the beginning of his journey with a very small daughter. In the second one there is that same daughter who became large enough to reach one of the first important goals of her life.
But Dennis is still next to her.
And that's probably what makes those photographs so powerful.
Family images acquire value over the years because they do not only preserve our faces. They preserve relationships, changes and people who have crossed with us whole pieces of life.
In 2000, Dennis kept his daughter in his arms.
In 2018 he could still do it.
It's just that, in the meantime, in that same pose, it's been 18 years of life.