We just took for granted that he was there and that someone, somewhere was taking pictures … but it turned out that not enough people did.

That is true for most of our pasts pre-smartphone. This is nowhere near as important as your grandfather, but I don't have any pictures of my first dog. I had her for 14 years and if I took any pictures of her, I've lost them. I can never see what she looked like again and every year, what she looked like fades a little more.