Photos are the last to go

[Troll]

<p>I'll have more to say about this later, when my brain begins to function normally (for me), but I just today returned from a one week trip to celebrate my Mother's 106th birthday. (Doing very well, thank you, considering that she's mean as a snake and deaf as a post). Everybody loves her!<br>

She has been in an assisted liviving facility for 9 years, and finally admitted to herself that she will never be moving back into her home of 80 years. She has always been a hoarder, and it has just been my sad duty to go through all the drawers and drawers of papers and photographs. Thank Gawd that my cousin is taking care of the furniture, dishes, and all that female kind of stuff.<br>

The papers part have generally been easy, out of date wills, lists of bridge clubs etc, lots of yellowed newspaper clippings, family and friends obituraries. Keep a few, throw most in the trash. <br>

But it's the photographs that have been really difficult. She only has room at the facility for a small box (maybe 50 images) taken since the easly 1900s of her friends, her family, self, graduation class of 1923, myself and my sister, and kids and grand kids and great grandkid. And a few from trips with the Baptist Church Tour Bus. I'm sure that you know exactly what I mean.<br>

All the pictures of our house in the big snow of 19xx and 19xx, and dogwoods, and all that stuff that she shot roll after roll have to go, (I kept sending her the latest automatic cameras and film to replace the old family Kodak 616 Autograhic that I robbed of it's lens sometimes in the '50s).<br>

Just as tough, or maybe more so, are the old photos I want to keep for myself. Our family, my "growing up" pictures (hard to believe that I was once tall and skinny), my dogs, my cars, my graduation, Aunts and Uncles (I don't have a single good picture of my Daddy), wonderful studio pictures of my Mother when she was a school marm, and a flapper.<br>

Anyhow, the point is that all the rest of the stuff can be carted away by the "Estate Austion" people. But throwing out hundreds or thousands of family photos, and deciding which few dozen are truly keepers, is a terrible, terrible job. And damn time-consuming.<br>

I've also made some interesting observations about the size of photographs, which I will report later.<br>

Right now, I'm Pooped!</p>

[silverscape]

<p>Bill...I can't even imagine the thought of having to get rid of pictures. Unless they were totally blurry or damaged or otherwise not worth keeping, I just couldn't even imagine throwing pictures away. You're definitely right, that would be a terrible job. I'm sure right now you're probably thinking of anywhere else where you might be able to store those photos instead of getting rid of them.<br /><br />I'm only 31, so of course I don't really have that big of a collection of pictures. Not including my pictures that I took just as a hobby and my binders full of negatives and prints, I think I only have maybe 2 or 3 small photo albums that are just personal pictures. (My mom has a bunch of photo albums from when I was a kid though). I can probably count on my fingers the number of pictures I've actually thrown away in my entire life. (Well, okay, I have ruined whole rolls of film before...but that doesn't count.) And that doesn't count the digital pictures I've deleted ;) <br /><br />It's interesting, when I became more interested in photography, even thought the thought of throwing away photographs just makes me cringe. It also makes you think about all the things a person sees and experiences in their life, when you see all that captured in photographs. It really is incredible.<br>

I definitely wouldn't want to be in your shoes. I don't see how you can make a decision like that. There has to be somewhere you can keep those pictures. Keeping photographs isn't hoarding. Every one of them can tell a story. <br>

</p>

[patrick_mont]

<p>Good luck! I sometimes have a hard time parting with prints that really arn't very good! Chris hit it. EVERY photograph can tell a story.</p>

[Rob_the_waste]

<p>You've got me thinking of another awful job. The bookshelf upstairs. It's full of pictures that were taken primarily before I got serious about photography. There are literally thousands of images that may or may not have pop spilled on them or some other source of discolouration. Around the time I started learning more about cameras, the pictures have been kept under "my" lock and key, and they are all in albums or boxes, nothing sticky. Although I've taken a lot of crappy shots over the past ten years, overall they're much better than what's upstairs. I'm afraid to look. </p>

[William Kahn]

<p>Right now, my drafting table is piled with hundreds of old family photos, some going back as far as the late 1920s. I've been (slowly) scanning them and will eventually put them all on DVDs. Then I'll find some way to archive the originals. The reason is that, someday, someone in the family will be able to look at them and get a better understanding of life back in the old days. We may not care that much, being too close to the times involved. But somewhere down the line, someone will......</p>

[henrik_lauridsen]

<p>A couple of weeks ago I finished scanning the photos my mother in law left us when she passed away. Old studio pictures of her grandparents, b/w formals from key events, and a load of Instamatic shots in both b/w and colour. Even the very old b/w were almost untouched by the passing time, but the Instamatic colour shots are all heavily faded. In the process I was really glad my scanner had a multi scan feature (crop and straighten) that actually works.<br>

Only a few of the shots are what I, as an amateur photographer would classify as keepers, but they all tell a story, so we decided to scan and keep them all.</p>

[leicaglow]

<p>Bill, it can be a daunting task. I took on the role of family photograph curator, and spent a lot of time talking to older members of the family to try to get stories. I've written down or recorded as much as I can. I also scan the important images and make them available online, and make prints and give them away at Christmas (they are the most popular gifts in the family right now). I know some people (with larger families than mine, probably) put them together and make a book on Blurb or Lulu and let family members order them. The toughest images are the ones you can't get any story on, and have no idea who it is of. It's sad we don't do a better job of curating images.</p>

[jim_gardner4]

<p>Bill, If you throw some of them away now, perhaps the ones your mother may not remember too well, then when its your kids turn to help you have a clear out they throw some away...... You see where this is going. Please keep them all unless as already suggested, they are damaged beond recognition etc. If you dont have the space for all of them, how about asking other family members to keep some as well. This was also act as a kind of insurance against loss.</p>

[magickmichael]

<p>I became the keeper of the family photographs about 5 years ago. Last year my father took a turn for the worse and I began the project of scanning all the images, color correcting them and restoring as many as I could (some of the restorations are on my website if you care). I have made the completed ones available to my family in private galleries on my site for anyone that wants them.</p>

<p>My original goal was to get all of them scanned and put them in a digital frame that would easily sit in my father's room. I was too slow. My father passed in January of this year. This has made it a much higher priortiy believe it or not. Now I want to get a few digital frames for my 4 siblings. </p>

<p>The part I am having trouble with is identifying most of the people in them. Some of the images taken at the turn of the century (1900) don't look like anyone I ever knew. Then again, I didn't know what my grandparents looked like when they were young either. By studying them in reverse order I am begining to piece together who is who and who is related to who. Had I been more diligent and started this project when my father was still alive thise would have been much easier.</p>

<p>Try digitizing them and save them for your kids. Sit with you mom and get the people identified. You will be glad you did.</p>

[User_502260]

<p>In 1995 a close friend of our family died. His wife moved out of their house and into an apartment. She had much less room for things in the new place. Our families had been connected since the 1950s and I could not bear seeing her throw away photo related items. I took the negatives from all the photos she had ever taken as well as her slide projector and all of her slides. She was going to throw all of these things out. My parents were not big picture takers while our friends were. There are many photos of our family in the negatives and some in the slides. More recently another family friend finally closed up her apartment in NY and cleared it out. She and her sister had moved overseas more than 10 years ago and had kept the NY apartment for returning to see friends and relatives. By the time the apartment was emptied most of those friends and relatives were gone. She also wanted to throw away negatives, slides and a slide projector. I have all of these now, somewhere in my house. My wife makes a face any time the subject comes up. It's not like we don't have the room. My wife just doesn't have the same feeling I do about the photos. I have accumulated a few Pentax Copipods in the last few years. My intention is to use one of them along with a 35mm SLR and a macro lens to copy the family photos that my two brothers have and which are not in my collection. At some time in the future I will want to scan all of the negatives and slides I got from family friends and make a CD for my son. He's 14 now so he's probably not thinking about a photo archive but I hope he will enjoy seeing the photos in the future.</p>

[SCL]

<p>Having gone thru the estates of both parents, two grandmothers and my wife...I have to say that it emotionally exhausting, and for me at least, a job never complete. I started digitizing the pics or negatives I kept, but that will probably take me forever +10 years at my rate of accomplishment. So, I imagine that the remaining 10% or so of what comprised the total I ended up keeping (including many of my old negs), will probably fall to my daughter some day, which means it will go out with the trash. Such a shame.</p>

[mark_medin]

<p>I have photos of my father (and taken by him) who died over thirty years ago. The span the time when he had just immigrated to this country in 1920 and lived in San Diego all the way to his grave marker. There are probably 80 or so of them from 1920-30 of him, his friends and girlfriends and even one of him with his first car (which I can't identify, more's the pity). There are fewer from the '30s-'40s, then hundreds after he got remarried in the '50s. Most (even the color ones) are in pretty good shape. What's odd are the color pictures seem to vary in fading depending on who processed them. Many are as good as the day they were processed, a few faded pretty badly.</p>

[k5083]

<p>Like many of you, I am the self appointed family photo archivist for my family. Bill, my grandmother is a little younger than your mom, but in about the same situation. My parents are cleaning out the apartment now. My standing order is that all negatives go to me. Albums full of prints, others can have, but I get the negs. Don't know if I will ever scan or even identify the people in more than a few of them, but a few linear feet of shelf space hardly seems much to invest against the possibility. I would save all old family negatives from being destroyed, even those of strangers, if I coult intercept them in time -- just for the sake of the socio-cultural history embodied in them.</p>

[Troll]

<p>As one would expect, 90%+ of the saved photos are people -- family members, friends, kids and their buddies (and pets). A few group photos (my father and his Sunday School class, Mother on the AARP trip to California, etc), it was almost monotonous to watch her go through them point out "he's dead, she's dead, etc, but damn if she didn't recognize nearly everyone. And sometime in the past she took the time and effort to write in pencil on the back of the prints who they were. She's a little pissed that she didn't bother notating the dates, though.<br>

Occasional pictures of the old homestead(s) and the new (1947) Chevy, etc are just enough to break the monotony of all the sour-faced relatives. Images taken on trips to the Grand Canyon, or Yellowstone, or Helena, Georgia, are immediately discarded unless there are reognizable figures in them.<br>

Weddings and funerals were a must keep, but very difficult to edit the keepers.<br>

I've seen photos of relatives I never heard of, and gotten some of their stories when I showed Mother the images (including several suicides which were never mentioned when I was growing up). My Gawd, families were huge in those days -- did they have nothing better to do than reproduce (although I shouldn't complain, as both my parents were the youngest of the dynasties).<br>

All four of my Grandparents died before I was born, and at last I got to see what they looked like before they were ancient. My Mother's father, a country doctor, was an incredibly handsome man, my paternal grandfather could have easily passed for a snake-oil salesman, both grandmothers looked as one would expect from women who had bourn 8 or 10 kids.<br>

There were a couple of bachelor uncles (who died young), of whom I'd always heard of in glowing tones of love and great admiration from my elderly aunts. "Gay as a Goose," is written all over their portraits.<br>

Despite that I'm from the South, there were no images of "non-white" family members, but then there were few pictures from before 1900. Were they ever mentioned -- No, but you can bet they were there, nonetheless.<br>

More later, on image sizes.</p>

[tsuacctnt]

<p>My Grandmother recently went into a nursing home. My brother came up with a pretty good idea for keeping all sorts of pictures handy for her. He bought her a digital frame and an SD card to store a thousand different pictures. Pictures of Grandkids and pictures of old friends all in one handy spot.</p>

[andrew_brown3]

<p>Hi Bill,<br>

Just at present we are sorting through all the things my partner's sister left --- in 2 houses and 6 garages. She was something of a hoarder and just kept everything she came across:it seems like that anyway. In amongst the dross of old sweaters and dust laden jackets though are some shopping bags, hundreds and hundreds of them, and we can't just throw them out because some times she put family photos from the 40ies and 50ies in the bottom of them! Not done deliberately I think, but just as she needed somewhere to put something at that moment and the nearest bag was pulled into service and then later on filled up with other stuff.<br>

The point I'm trying to make! is that these photos show people like my partner when she was young, sitting on her Mum's lap. The sister who died is there, smartly dressed, sitting beside someone, her boyfriend perhaps? in a park in Toronto where she worked until coming back to London to work, retire and store stuff, and these photos and lots of others were just lost for years until found by chance really last week. Even those with people we don't know are being kept, because someone else in the family may recognise them !<br>

It just shows how precious these little images are.</p>

<p>Andy.</p>