What do you wish was in old photographs?

I recently found some photos from 40 years ago, of my house when I

was a baby. I was annoyed that my parents had only taken pictures of

the kids filling the frame, when I would have liked to see the rooms

of the house, the cars outside, the stores down the street, etc.

 

When you take a photo today, what do you think people will want to

see in it forty years from now, that is different than what you

think you want to capture now?

Sounds like you're complaining about the pictures on photo.net....

Henry, give your parents a little slack. Some folks have different interests in photography, and it seems that theirs was documenting the growth of you and your siblings.

 

Me, I want to be able to see how the neighborhood has changed. Having homes and shops in images really shows you how we've progressed. I live in Philadelphia, the city has changed much in my 42 years here. Thankfully, my parents have captured some of that change on film. Not too many images, but enough to bring back many memories.

Like this?<div></div>

Another.<div></div>

That's a good example of a photo that contains a lot of "metadata", or self-describing information. It's got a person in it who is probably the main subject, but it has all kinds of details which place it in time and space. The cmodel of car outside, the furniture style, clothing, the metal alarm strips around the window, the style of woodwork, etc.

 

I wonder if there is a way to train yourself to take pictures that have this kind of self-descriptive or self-identifying information in them. It would be something I want to create for people who view it a long time from now.

 

 

I am wondering what other users here think would make a photograph that has that kind of anchor in a time and place?

What you are describing here is linked to the concept of a map, which is a way of representing information. Why does one take a photo? To record a place at a time. A lot of photos become an album, which is then looked at from time to time, but on a one to one basis. With the web maps are no longer just a visual representation of geographical space and objects and their positions in relation to each other, but are visualisations of the structure of the databases in which the information that they are created from are stored. These can then shared with many people and the taking of the photo becomes only a part of the whole experience.

 

Any visual representation which aids the user visualising the structure of data or the information in cyberspace can thus be seen as a map, and therefore creates an interface or door through which the user will be able to interact with the data in the easiest and most efficient way.

 

There are a variety of sites where maps are successfully being used to structure and access pictorial databases in a way the helps the visitor create a mental models of the place - a modern day photo album. Here one can look at Manhattan or Paris, for example.

 

http://www.skyscraper.org/WEB_PROJECTS/projects.htm

http://www.ensmp.fr/~latour/virtual/index.html

I shoot what pleases me I guess and never thought of this. I hope they the next gen will want to see what we looked like in our perky youth,and putting on the ritz for the camera. As far as the milieu, well,in an upwardly mobile society as we want to call ourselves, parents wanted-and maybe we persist- material and emotional success,not the often mudane realities. (That is for the modern feel gritty cinema) Even such elegant stylish art direction movies, like the Godfather Part II,very authentic and researched have a dreamy, sepia- toned gauzy view of Ellis Island and Lower Manhattan. The reality was surely less gauzy, Henry. I have a wedding photo from 1922,and it is as much illusion as today's wedding shots.(The mainstay of photographic records) It documents little of the reality,but how my parents might like to be remembered,after elopement,after family grudging reconciliation,after much hard feeling. Pictures of family are poor documents and I personally try to show day to day stuff. Photos are an illusion,except for the works of Hines and a few others.<div></div>

Visiting home under construction, 1969 in red dirt country Central Oahu.<div></div>

Considering that I have absolutely no idea what imagery from the past will be important to future generations several decades from now, I tend to focus on expressing how I see things now. Any guessing that goes on in this thread can't possibly represent the views of people (many of whom haven't even been born yet) who will have developed during another forty years of cultural, technological, and environmental change.

 

If, in forty years, people actually are interested in the photos I'm shooting now, I suspect it will be because they appreciate something about the way I see things.

I used to wonder what peculiar virus caused my family, like so many others, to shoot about one roll of film a year with a Christmas tree on either end and lots of grins in between - often while posed in front of buildings, signs, cars, porches and distant vistas.

 

Now I realize it tells me as much about families as any "serious" photography executed according to recognized standards.

 

It is a little unusual, tho', that your family photos were so tightly framed. Someone must have read a photo magazine that advised "Get closer!"

 

My photos will reveal that I have peculiar obsessions with the mundane and an apparent inability to concentrate on any particular subject matter. Future generations will conclude - probably rightly so - that I was obsessive-compulsive and likely a better cook than photographer.

Name badges!!!

 

I got lucky, and pried the identities of at least half of the people in my aunt's photo

collection from her before she passed a few months ago at 97, but too many of them she'd

just forgotten (she was as sharp as can possibly expected at that age, but people you

haven't thought about in 70 years can be forgotten....)

 

So I've got these incredible 100+ year old family photos, and no one alive has the faintest

clue who anyone is. grrrrrrr.

 

Back to the original line of thought... I agree that while tight framing often makes for a

better picture at the time, the stray Studebaker ineptly included can actually make the shot

more interesting 40 years later.

 

I've found that in my own childhood pictures that items--such as toys, cars or furniture--

that were time-specific bring back floods of memories of the time in question, more so

than the other people or the events that are really the subject.

 

The '65 Thunderbird we had my entire youth (and that I still have!) doesn't elicit that

much--it was a constant--but the crummy little Ford Courier we had as a second vehicle

for a couple of years in the 70's brings back a flood. Ditto the Falcon that the Courier

replaced, the car that I, escaping supervision one evening when I was 5, decided to play

service station attendant with and fill up with "gas". Think like a five-year-old for a

second--gas comes out of a hose, right? Hey, I know where there's a hose! You should

have seen the look on my father's face the next morning when--having walked back from

his stalled car--he was informed that he couldn't be out of gas "'cuz I fill it for you las'

night." (big proud grin).

 

Every time I see that car in a picture I'm reminded of that incident, and how lucky I am that

my father didn't believe in beatings. Aunts, uncle, cousins--so what. But that vomit-green

Falcon sulking in the corner of the frame always makes me smile.

It's funny you should mention the car. I have some pictures I took a little while ago where I was thinking "this would be a great picture except it has the car sitting there as the background". Now I can see it's something that will make the image more personal and special later.

Cars indeed bring back a time and place feel, San Diego in the mid sixties, for instance, a red car,with a white rag top. Let posterity sort it out. That is for them to research, like family archaeologists sifting pieces of pottery. I still shoot what pleases me.<div></div>

You've posed an interesting situation. Back in the very early 70s, here in the Bronx (a county, or borough) of NYC, there was an old elevated train that ran from 149th Street and Third Avenue to Fordham Road (in front of Fordham University, the Sears building, and now the new Fordham Plaza). I found out that it was going to be demolished. I went out and bought 200 feet of black and white film, got the re-usable 35mm cartridges (plus new batteries, etc) and I asked for my two weeks vacation to coincide with the last week that the trains were in service and the week that the demolition was to start. At the very last minute, my boss changed her mind (she was indeed a mean old crow). She KNEW what my plans were and decided to thwart my plans; it worked, I was married and supporting my wife while she finished her last year in high school and I couldn't just quit (we married two days after her mother had passed away).

 

My plans were to walk the entire length of the route and take photos of all of the stations on the route, the stairs leading up to each station (with the station signs), the old token booths, the old, wooden turnstyles, the surrounding buildings with the elevated train tracks in front, the old-fashioned trains and the old seats, etc. I also wanted to take a couple of rides back and forth on the last train ride before it ceased operation. I don't know of anyone who had the foresight to take photos of the now defunct "Third Avenue 'L'." Imagine, if you will, what these images could have been worth today....

 

Yeah, I should've, would've, could've, might've.... agh, this is one memory that still irks me to this very day. :(

Y'know it occurred to me that that first photo that is posted above is really great because it shows both an interior and and an exterior in the same photo. It's like having two photos in one. That's one of the techniques I think I'll put on my list of "how to make a photo that is interesting in forty years".

 

I'm not suggesting that taking photos for posterity is the only goal, just that it seems like there are steps that can be taken such that the photo both captures what you want today, and will contain information which is of more interest to others later. And "others" includes ourselves, because we are different people 40 years later, and will be looking for things in the pictures that we don't think of today.

 

The comment above about capturing the ephemeral rather than the constant really hits the nail on the head. What's most valuable is the stuff that is gone and won't come back. If the childhood house has been torn down, then a photo of it in the background is that much more powerful. Or if the streetcar has been torn down, then a picture of you riding it, with the clothes and hairstyles of your fellow riders, makes it very evocative.

First of all, this is a fun topic, and shows that total enjoyment of photography should be the primary topic, ...Family pics are great, but they sure lead a rough life as the shoebox is opened and everybody touches them, These image treasure troves are often one of the most important items in a family aside from financial documents...My dad took pictures until 1958, when an accident broke his Retina...Living in war-ravaged Europe, they are sure great to look at now. In this image a wartime Dodge is being used as a Tractor for plowing (Ahem, this was an officially sanctioned government project on US property) I'm in the passenger seat, showing my early tendency to be a gearhead already.....<div></div>

"What do you wish was in old photographs?" My grampa. He was a real funny guy and i can't remember his face anymore:(

" likely a better cook than photographer" -Lex, that's impossible since they might see photos made by you, but they will never taste anything you cooked. Hopefully.

It takes a certain amount of perspective to shoot ordinary sights around you for the history books. It is natural to assume that things as they are now will remain the same, and that--anyway--there's nothing interesting about things as they are now.

 

This is actually a confession. When I moved into my current neighborhood almost thirty years ago, I should have photographed every block every year. I didn't do it because of the attitudes described above. Had I made those shots, the record would be fascinating even at this small remove in time. And time would swell the number of people fascinated by it.

 

And of course, unusual events can give unusual power to such "record" shots. Witness any pictures of the World Trade Center.

 

As for record shots of people....A friend of mine used to say that, if you don't like a picture of yourself, just keep it ten years: you'll LOVE it.

Sandra, in forty years, these will be the good old days. So get out there and photograph everything. The things you dislike today will seem harmless compared to what you will dislike in forty years. The things you like today will be gone.

 

You will be cursing the policies of 2004 that caused the miseries of 2044, and you will curse yourself for having supported many of them.

This is one of the most interesting and inspiring discussions I've ever read in a photo forum. It's a subject that I'm really concerned of..

Well, this my contribution wasn't very useful, but I wanted to say it ;-)

This has gottem me to thinking. I have some old photographs of family that nobody knows who they are just that they are family. I have some 8,000+ photos, all of the digital, that I have taken in the last few years. I wonder how many of them will survive to be a 100 years old. Digital has the potential to last forever. A hundred years from now I wonder how many people will look at my digital photos and know who it is in them.

 

I'm going to sit down tonight and look at all these photos and start putting in names and information about them into the jpeg header information. I know there is a slim and none chance that any of it will make to a hundred years but there is a chance.

In travel photography, as when you go far away and shoot, even the most mundane things (to the people who live there) are ripe with interest because they are sometimes so different from back home. The surroundings, features and social milieu, add immensely to the impact of many pictures. Go to Cuba and you feel transported back in time to the fifties because of all the old classic American cars alone, let alone the very colorful inhabitants.

 

So how would a foreign photographer coming to the US for the very first time (who also happens to be say, an economics major with a masters in anthropology), photograph your family and abode? What would his/her style be, what focal length lenses would they use? Probably not macro and probably not long. I'd suspect just wide to normal or 24mm to 50mm in 35mm terms. They would then endeavor to place the family in their natural surrounding, creating an association of person or people and their "stuff", where the stuff conveys some details about the subjects--who, when, socio-economic level, etc.

 

Another way would be to go through your house, and carefully photograph all the cabinet contents, tops of dressers, desks and tables, etc, creating a subtle view of the people who lived there from the many knick-knacks, art-works, product choices, framed pictures, notes, toys, posters, clothes and the like, without anyone needing to be present. Also, shoot laying around magazine covers, calendars, newspaper headings and the ubiquitous note-covered refrigerator door, to "date-stamp" the collection. Then these environmental shots could then be added as it's own special section to the family album.

Some years ago, I once again went to visit the city of my birth, Vienna, Austria. I came across a series of photographic booklets depicting areas of Vienna in the year 1912. I decided to re-shoot as far as possible every one of the views shown. I succeded in about 80%

of cases and it was a most interesting and gratifying exercise. The changes that had occured were often surprising, in other instances things had hardly changed at all. In the event my sister was delighted to receive the 'Then and Now' volume as a gift...