The Perils of Digital Data

How do I download my messenger history?

This was the last photo Dad sent me via Facebook Messenger, the day before he passed away. He had just completed the first pass of his latest print. He referred to the drying sheets of paper as his laundry. There are hundreds of these images along with his running commentary of what he was working on trapped in the data banks of Facebook. How do I retrieve them?

Dad and I were in contact regularly - not quite every day, but almost. His preferred means of digital communication was Fbook messenger and over the past number of years before he passed away he and I exchanged many, many messages. Lots of them included images - stuff he was working on, photos snapped as we went about our days, or posts or news articles that caught our attention.

While he waited for ink to dry, he worked on other projects. He was cutting this block (Cascade Mountain and Banff Ave.) in the down times between printing other images. I love this image. During his last visit, he made me stop in the middle of the bridge so he could lean out the window of the car and take reference shots he could refer back to later when he had returned to his studio. That was during the Arctic deep freeze over the Christmas holidays in 2021/22 and getting out of the car and wandering around with a camera wasn’t really an option. As it turns out, being right in the middle of the road was a great vantage point.

All evening last night I searched in vain to find out how to download our conversation history and all the images so I have them somewhere safely backed up. Given that the input has been excellent on the request for great graphic novels and the ins and outs of ironing boards, I’m tossing out the question:

“How can I download a complete Facebook Messenger chat history - all the messages and all the images?”

Thank you in advance. This is proving to be more challenging than I had anticipated.