Photo fate

 

Being home-bound has led a lot of people to tackle those "round-to-it" projects they've been putting off - often for years. I am no exception.

While I am a good minimizer with no heaps of boxes or bags of unused clothes or appliances or whatever else people tend to accumulate in my home or garage, there is the closet in my guest room that has needed weeding and organizing for quite some time. Besides old scrapbooks, family history documents, legal papers, electronic odds and ends, and my children's/grandchildren's artwork, it contains a lot of photographs. The old kind. The ones printed on paper. You know, back in the pre-digital era.

These photos can be broadly lumped into three separate categories:

Old photos from 1900 to 1970. My grandparents and their siblings. My parents in their younger days. And my siblings and I in our own childhoods. Mostly black and white. Some of old relatives whose names are now lost to time. (Examples in this post.)

Photos given to me from 1970 on, not taken by me. Professional photos, school photos, shared snapshots, old Christmas cards, and those of just plain mysterious origin. 

Photos I have personally taken from 1970 through about 2001. Trips, family gatherings, celebrations, lots of photos of children, grandchildren - the normal photo album content.

Questions with which I am struggling include:

• What do I keep and what do I toss? When I converted my travel slides to digital, I converted only those that had people I recognized in them.
• Do all these photos need to be scanned? If I scan, them do I need to keep the paper copy?
• Do all these photos need some kind of tag or annotation? Dates and names at least.
• If I keep the physical copy, how do I organize and store them so they won't deteriorate?
• Should I keep these photos, or give them to my children and siblings now so they don't have to worry about this stuff when I croak? (Not that I am planning to do so anytime soon.)

One big reason I know that I've been procrastinating about dealing with these photos is that reviewing them will carry an emotional toll as well.  Children grow up. Grandparents and parents die. Romantic loves fade. Friends grow apart. One has to ask what one could have done to have made all the happy, but transitory parts of a person's life permanent. What if I had made different choices? When have I failed others and when have I done right by them? When did I take the easy path rather than the right path?

Old photos are a reminder of the vivid impermanence of life is so undeniable. The old bromide about not crying because it's over, but smiling because it happened is a weak tonic for true sadness. 

Old photos? What is your plan?

Comments

[Floyd Pentliln]

I’m exactly in the same boat - except I have one unmarried living sibling and my wife and I had no children. I’m thinking that bundling all the pictures up for easy disposal after I’m gone. The pictures will mean little/nothing to my nieces. Small family.

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Floyd,

My goal is to have my children be able to clean my house out in under a day. I've relatives who were hoarders and it's not fun cleaning up after them!

Hope that day is far, far away and that you are doing well.

Doug

[Joy]

I’m facing the same tough problem. Not sure why, but I feel really guilty throwing away old black and white photos of people I don’t know. Especially the World War II photos of various unknown soldiers. What to do?

[Tim Stahmer]

A few years ago I digitized all the family photos I had, put them up in a section of my photo site, and sent the link to every family member I could contact. At first, no one looked at them. But gradually, the views have picked up and I've heard from some relatives I didn't know I had to thank me for the collection. Some also send me pictures to add to the gallery (which I do if they are already digital).

My larger problem is the collection my wife has. She was a middle and high school choir director for many years, and we (mostly me) took thousands of pictures during that time. She has disposed of none of them, but has also never organized them. Occasionally she dives into the boxes to find something when former students remind her on Facebook of different events. I'd love to just toss everything, but that would likely cause problems.