View Full Version : Sentimental old photos - what to do with them?
In my attempt to stay occupied on a sub-freezing day, I am once again going through old family photos. I would like to get it all condensed in chronological order in one container. I have started several times in the recent past and can't quite get through it. My logic in keeping or culling is that some day, DD (should she outlive me) will inherit said photos and perhaps wonder who these ancestors were. Will she even care? She probably only has vague memories of my little brother who died of AIDS when she 8. And yet I have quite a pile of photos and mementos of him saved because I knew and loved him. Actually, I don't feel anything but sadness when I look at them. How does one reckon with these emotions about long ago memories? Should I be practical and just label and save a few good photos of him and pitch the other stuff that documented his existence? I don't know if it is getting older or just the realization of how transient our lives are but these are hard decisions for me. Thoughts?
iris lilies
2-15-21, 1:54pm
Yes, keep for instance 3 best photos of your brother and toss the rest.
Dont bother to keep anything that you haven’t identified as to name, place, date. Even if you don’t know exact place names or address, label the photo with something like “George in our house on Park Street in Dallas in circa 1962.”
Think beyond your daughter. If she is not interested, one of your grandchildren will be. If they aren’t interested,their kids will be.
Make this package of family photos for the long term: small, neat, easily portable.
After the collection is organized, consider if you will digitize it. Since you have just one person to pass on these items to, it may not be necessary to replicate them Although consider a digital copy stored safely keeps them safe from physical damage.
Please dont let your emotional baggage interfere with this valuable task of preserving family stuff. You honor the memories by responsibly preserving them.
iris lilies
2-15-21, 2:02pm
An additional thought:
If you want to keep all of the photos of your brother FOR YOU even if they are not good ones, then fine, do that. But I would really, if I were you, keep “your “pile of images separate from the family legacy pile. “Your” pile can easily be identified and tossed in the future.
I have 120 years of family photos in albums. I'm still missing one box of albums that are somewhere in my barn in a box because we just moved. It took about 18 months to pull them all together and make the albums. I did not want to digitize although I did copy some for a cousin.
They are chronological, and I can put my finger on pictures really easily, and just last week did so to show my dil her daughter's uncanny resemblance to my son at the same age. If I had wanted to, I could have shown her his uncanny resemblance to my mother's great-uncle (she got the Scottish genes) but that's a fun down the road discovery for the girls to make when they start looking at the albums.
When the photos were in containers I could not make sense of them. I am now up to date so when the kids send me photos, I print them out and they go right in the album. Or at least they did until this move, which messed up all my organizational systems. . .
As to the emotional stuff, I needed to get them all together first and then see how I felt about it all. One thing I am noticing with the letters is that I am starting to give them to cousins who share the same grandparents, as I am ready to let go of the physical artifacts in some cases.
With your brother, if it makes me sad and he had no offspring, I would keep the best and destroy the rest, if there is no one else that wants them. I have found this to bring me some peace with some difficult memories. I have also found peace by offloading some of this stuff to other family members.
I have to remind myself I was not born to be the repository of all family memory and emotions, even though others may try to cast me in this role. It's my life, my space, and my mind, and I get to decide what to keep and what to prayerfully let go.
And then I come across a DVD that was apparently copied from old home movie reels of 6 yo me dancing around the living room in a tutu and little 2 yo brother playing in the mud. Aaarggh!! Or of a mad men style party my father threw with all the guests drinking martinis around the pool.
Yes, to Tybee's point, some people are natural family historians, whether their family appreciates it or not. I am my family's historian and archivist. I do Ancestry and I spend a few hours a season on keeping it updated. I also have a LOT of photos, and I have a huge resistance to throwing anything out. So far, all my photos are in various places. I have one album that I kept throughout my kids' childhood, and I still have my college albums (remember that awful self-sticking stuff?). And my wedding album, and my mother's wedding album. I have a train case where my MIL kept her old family photos, and I have little albums my cousin made and gave me when we had family gatherings, as well as an album she made me for my 60th birthday party.
So they're all over the place.
My thoughts mirror IL's. Do the minimal amount of work to at least loosely organize them. Identify as many as you can on the back, just enough so our family members have something to go on if they're interested. I think it's a great point not to second guess who will care, because someone down the line is bound to be fascinated by the family history. I have spent many very frustrated hours trying to find when my great-grandfather died because he died in an asylum in upstate New York and it appears that they just buried these "throwaway people" in a mass grave up there. I finally did find out the date of his death.
If you have any interesting stories, write them down and stick them in with the photos. Photos on their own without context are less interesting. I'm not saying to write stories about every picture--be selective, but provide any telling details about the relatives you knew that your kids might not know, and your grandkids definitely don't know. The color is in the details. I always feel that everyone's story deserves to be told, and if not told, at least made available. Every time I think about the fact that I am the sole live keeper of my beloved great-aunt's memory, I get very sad.
I do like the idea of separating the me pile from the legacy ones. That way at some point in the future, I might be able to let the emotional ones go with one fell swoop.
Also, ask around and find the other "family historians" in the family. I have located two on my dad's side, and now my cousin's daughter is stepping up to the plate, so I know where to send things from each side of the family, and they can sort them out and take over.
As in by the time I die, I want them all moved on from me to the next generation.
iris lilies
2-15-21, 2:57pm
We have no younger generation in my family of origin. Memories of me and my brother will die out sooner than for our cousins with progeny. That is fine, not a concern of mine.
But an amazing number of my cousins have no children. In my peer group of about 8 of us, only one reproduced and that one just one time.
GeorgeParker
2-15-21, 4:07pm
Yes, keep for instance 3 best photos of your brother and toss the rest.Instead of keep the best I would say keep the most representative. Sure you want to keep some photos that clearly show what he looked like, but it's just as important to keep photos that show who he was and what he enjoyed, even if they aren't very good photographically.
For example: In my case there are a couple of photos of me with my motorcycle, one of me with a backpack next to an Appalachian Trail sign, and one of me with long hair and a big beard working on my bicycle. And one of the most precious photos of my mother is her taking a nap on the sofa with our dog curled up in the space between her feet and the end of the sofa. It's not a great photo, but very meaningful. And as suggested above, photos or groups of photos should have a few stories or some other information about who this person was or why these photos are meaningful. Don't go overboard, and do just a little bit at a time as you work your way through memory boxes. It will be easier that way. And if something is a near duplicate of another photo or meaningless or whatever, either go ahead and toss it or put it in a "toss later" box so you can glance at them again after you've been through everything else.
Having just had to deal with two huge photo and slide collections of deceased relatives, I would say:
- make it easy for those who come after you before you die, by organizing or tossing
- digitize the good stuff, drop it onto a family web site, give due consideration to the rapid pace of evolution of digital file formats
- don't expect your successors to expend any amount of effort on the project unless it is trivial
iris lilies
2-15-21, 5:42pm
George, we can define “best” photos however we wish. I didnt mean necessarily best according to photographic standards.Best could be when the subject was at peak looks and had all of his hair, or best meaning cleanest look without excess fashion such as 80’s big hair, or as you say posed with something that characterized him.
GeorgeParker
2-15-21, 5:53pm
George, we can define “best” photos however we wish.I know. But I prefer the word "representative" as being most descriptive of what I like to see in a photo collection.
This project is still in limbo with the dining room table covered in piles of photos. One mystery photo led me to email my older brother, the family historian, to see if he knew who this fellow was. He has collected family info all the way back to the 1700s so he knew that the man was a relative who died in a mining accident in 1920. At the time, it was a family tragedy. Now I can at least write on the back who this handsome chap was. Between us, we have many photos from the family's early 20th century pioneer life which are fascinating to look at. For now, I am at least getting groups together and will go through each group one by one. I like GP's idea of a toss later pile for those I can't quite decide on yet.
Teacher Terry
2-15-21, 6:49pm
My kids want the photo albums from their childhood so I kept those. I only took a few nice photos from my mom before she died. The slides she had no one wanted either so she made vhs tapes for each of us. Then she threw everything away. Nothing worse then looking at pictures of people you never knew. I have no grandchildren and I suspect that the kids will keep some of the pictures from their childhood and throw the rest away after I am gone. I rarely even take pictures on vacation anymore. I don’t see the point. My best friend wanted me to go through her parent’s slides with her and I said no way.
iris lilies
2-15-21, 7:23pm
My kids want the photo albums from their childhood so I kept those. I only took a few nice photos from my mom before she died. The slides she had no one wanted either so she made vhs tapes for each of us. Then she threw everything away. Nothing worse then looking at pictures of people you never knew. I have no grandchildren and I suspect that the kids will keep some of the pictures from their childhood and throw the rest away after I am gone. I rarely even take pictures on vacation anymore. I don’t see the point. My best friend wanted me to go through her parent’s slides with her and I said no way.
Oh my god that is torturous, going through old slides belong to other people.
Teacher Terry
2-15-21, 7:35pm
I told her I wasn’t willing to go through my own parents slides yet someone else’s. I told her to throw them away:)).
My father left boxes and boxes of slides that turned out to be shots taken from airplanes.
My father left boxes and boxes of slides that turned out to be shots taken from airplanes.
When we were cleaning out my parents' upstairs closet we found a giant box of slides that turned out to be from the family that had owned the house before them. So 1960's slides from another family, taking up space for 50 years.
When we were cleaning out my parents' upstairs closet we found a giant box of slides that turned out to be from the family that had owned the house before them. So 1960's slides from another family, taking up space for 50 years.
A museum may have found them interesting from a cultural perspective
iris lilies
2-16-21, 11:12am
A museum may have found them interesting from a cultural perspective
Our neighborhood archives would love to have images of this neighborhood from the 1960’s since few people who cared about architecture photographed houses here so there are few images.
Goong through hundreds of slides to find those images tho...nope.
My peers are moving out of this neighborhood at a rapid clip, and are dumping their own household’s “neighborhood archives” on our archivist who fortunately has a triple garage. He digitizes all important stuff and sends some hard copies the public library.
From my peers he gets collection after duplicative collection, items he has seen a million times.
catherine
2-16-21, 11:46am
Our neighborhood archives would love to have images of this neighborhood from the 1960’s since few people who cared about architecture photographed houses here so there are few images.
Goong through hundreds of slides to find those images tho...nope.
My peers are moving out of this neighborhood at a rapid clip, and are dumping their own household’s “neighborhood archives” on our archivist who fortunately has a triple garage. He digitizes all important stuff and sends some hard copies the public library.
From my peers he gets collection after duplicative collection, items he has seen a million times.
I am on three different Facebook groups that are there solely to post historical images of hometowns: so I belong to my childhood home FB group, my summer home FB group, and then someone signed me up for the Burlington FB group, which is not really one I connect with on an emotional basis, but I still like looking at the pictures of the way it used to be.
So, does your archivist have a FB page where he can share those old pictures? It's a great way to keep the neighborhood alive in a way.
A museum may have found them interesting from a cultural perspective
I doubt it, having looked at them carefully.
iris lilies
2-16-21, 1:30pm
I am on three different Facebook groups that are there solely to post historical images of hometowns: so I belong to my childhood home FB group, my summer home FB group, and then someone signed me up for the Burlington FB group, which is not really one I connect with on an emotional basis, but I still like looking at the pictures of the way it used to be.
So, does your archivist have a FB page where he can share those old pictures? It's a great way to keep the neighborhood alive in a way.
Our archivist writes regular blog articles with images. Also, All of the images are digitized in a database and are publicly available from our website.
BikingLady
2-16-21, 3:23pm
Mom was the photo family queen. She loved photos so much so that there were shelves full of albums, perfectly labeled numbered, some dedicated to just a single family member or friends. She would sit at night and look through an album, great pleasure it gave her. Oh gosh mom passed and there they sat. Dad passed and I stared at the albums. I wanted zero. I felt terrible like there must be something wrong with me. I asked both sons, nope. I asked brother, nope. Husband took one that was Me as a baby, with out me knowing. He said it is very special to him. Yes I tossed all.
I just am not a picture person. I wonder why that is? I attributed it to Mom being so over the top picture collector.
BikingLady
2-16-21, 3:24pm
Our archivist writes regular blog articles with images. Also, All of the images are digitized in a database and are publicly available from our website.
Oh gosh I tried this on FB, my hometown. I have been gone 40 years and I swear the old historic photos I would say OH look just like I remember, that made me historic!
ToomuchStuff
2-16-21, 4:53pm
In a way, I think looking at old photo's, are kind of like visiting a persons gravesite. Fewer seem to do it then with my grandparents WWII generation. Those that do family tree's, like them, but so many more seem to view it as living in the past.
I saved most of my grandparents photo's, even though so many are not marked. Some were framed and I have kept them in frames (old baptismal certificates, gold star flag and letter from FDR, local Truman photo, Circus wedding of my Grandfathers cousin). Others, just have things I like (old family farmhouse, old cars, etc). With the new house, I need to go through them, and keep some and pitch more.
iris lilies
2-16-21, 6:33pm
I am on three different Facebook groups that are there solely to post historical images of hometowns: so I belong to my childhood home FB group, my summer home FB group, and then someone signed me up for the Burlington FB group, which is not really one I connect with on an emotional basis, but I still like looking at the pictures of the way it used to be.
So, does your archivist have a FB page where he can share those old pictures? It's a great way to keep the neighborhood alive in a way.
My home town FB page won’t let me on! I’ve applied twice! I have two photos I want to upload. Their loss.
in order to join, you have to tell them why “Altoona Rocks.” I have a VERY hard time thinking of even one reason why it rocks, so perhaps my insincerity shines through my answer...
My aunt was really eccentric. She was beautiful, artistic, outgoing, loving and gregarious. My cousin (her daughter) is 1/5 in these categories. She was clearing out stuff of her mom's (who'd passed away) and was about to chuck a HUMONGOUS portrait of our grandmother (aunt's mother) as a young woman, probably in her teens. It's a really unusual photo; looks like it's taken outside of either a circus or revival tent in Colorado probably during the Dust Bowl, and she's wearing a fedora-like hat. I love it, but my aunt had it way blown up and framed in a heavy, gold frame -- it is probably 3-1/2 feet tall. I couldn't let her throw it in the dumpster, so it's now in my bedroom.
Everyone in the family laughs because I have this monster-sized picture of grandma as a girl, and now I'm not sure what to do with it. It seems disrespectful somehow to just toss it.
GeorgeParker
2-17-21, 4:35pm
Everyone in the family laughs because I have this monster-sized picture of grandma as a girl, and now I'm not sure what to do with it. It seems disrespectful somehow to just toss it.Let em laugh. It's your bedroom, your picture of grandma, and anyone who thinks it's funny should mind their own business.
Or you could just laugh right along with them about it's size but say you're going to keep it because you love it. :)
On a related topic, I still have in my possession a large pastel portrait done of me when I was 12 or 13. It was a thing in San Antonio where I grew up to have pastel or oil portraits done of one's daughters back then. Several years back, I removed it from its gilded frame and stuck it away since I felt weird getting rid of it. And when I got the photo boxes out of the closet to go through the other day, there was that stupid portrait staring at me from behind the boxes. It has got to go so I will ask DH to dispose of it.
iris lilies
2-17-21, 8:02pm
On a related topic, I still have in my possession a large pastel portrait done of me when I was 12 or 13. It was a thing in San Antonio where I grew up to have pastel or oil portraits done of one's daughters back then. Several years back, I removed it from its gilded frame and stuck it away since I felt weird getting rid of it. And when I got the photo boxes out of the closet to go through the other day, there was that stupid portrait staring at me from behind the boxes. It has got to go so I will ask DH to dispose of it.
There was one of those in my family, a portrait of me. I don’t remember what happened to it but I don’t think anyone was sad to see ago even my mother. It didn’t look especially like me it was done from a photograph
ToomuchStuff
2-18-21, 8:28am
My aunt was really eccentric. She was beautiful, artistic, outgoing, loving and gregarious. My cousin (her daughter) is 1/5 in these categories. She was clearing out stuff of her mom's (who'd passed away) and was about to chuck a HUMONGOUS portrait of our grandmother (aunt's mother) as a young woman, probably in her teens. It's a really unusual photo; looks like it's taken outside of either a circus or revival tent in Colorado probably during the Dust Bowl, and she's wearing a fedora-like hat. I love it, but my aunt had it way blown up and framed in a heavy, gold frame -- it is probably 3-1/2 feet tall. I couldn't let her throw it in the dumpster, so it's now in my bedroom.
Everyone in the family laughs because I have this monster-sized picture of grandma as a girl, and now I'm not sure what to do with it. It seems disrespectful somehow to just toss it.
Love to see that. That was the local of my grandfathers cousin.
AFter my mom died, I brought home about 25 containers of half-filled photo albums, packets of snapshots, old photographs, framed family portraits, etc. I parked them in an extra bedroom, set up a desk and a TV and used the next winter to sort. I kept what I wanted, gave a bunch to my brother, sent some to other relatives. Everything else, I took with me to a family reunion and told them I wasn't bringing it back. My next step was to sort again and organize what I kept. I ended up with some I didn't want. I took an evening and poured a glass of wine and burned them in an outdoor fire pit. It seemed more respectful than just throwing them away.
iris lilies
2-18-21, 6:15pm
AFter my mom died, I brought home about 25 containers of half-filled photo albums, packets of snapshots, old photographs, framed family portraits, etc. I parked them in an extra bedroom, set up a desk and a TV and used the next winter to sort. I kept what I wanted, gave a bunch to my brother, sent some to other relatives. Everything else, I took with me to a family reunion and told them I wasn't bringing it back. My next step was to sort again and organize what I kept. I ended up with some I didn't want. I took an evening and poured a glass of wine and burned them in an outdoor fire pit. It seemed more respectful than just throwing them away.
I have done the wine drinking/burning in fireplace ritual! Yes, it honors people and memories in a way that tossing into a landfill does not, it seems. That also keeps the objects out of the hands of others, like nosy neighbors. :) We have communal du,psters here.
Me, too! I throw in white sage and say a prayer, and I think that helps, too.
Teacher Terry
2-19-21, 12:28pm
My mom threw hers out in a apartment dumpster and I found it a little sad. She said that’s life and she was right because no one has been burdened by pictures of people that they don’t even know. I told my kids they can take what they want now and I can dispose of the rest or they can after I am gone. They have chosen door # 2. My youngest is more sentimental than my oldest. The reality is with no grandchildren everything ends with them. Even if I had grandchildren no guarantee they would want any of it. That’s the reality that I think some people are trying to deny.
iris lilies
2-19-21, 1:01pm
My mom threw hers out in a apartment dumpster and I found it a little sad. She said that’s life and she was right because no one has been burdened by pictures of people that they don’t even know. I told my kids they can take what they want now and I can dispose of the rest or they can after I am gone. They have chosen door # 2. My youngest is more sentimental than my oldest. The reality is with no grandchildren everything ends with them. Even if I had grandchildren no guarantee they would want any of it. That’s the reality that I think some people are trying to deny.
I don’t consider interest in family history sentimental. I respect the valuing of family lore and artifacts as a worthwhile exercise in intellectual curiosity. How our ancestors fit into their times is part of our country’s history and culture.
But there are ways to reduce the burden of old family photos. Organize them, mark them, toss the bad ones. Get rid of the ones of people no one knows if there really IS no way to identify them. Reduce the collection to a shoebox or two. The much favored albums take up tons of room. If you have more than a couple of shoeboxes, digitize them onto a thumb drive. A small organized collection could well be valuable to future generations and keeping that small collection for them shouldn't be much of a burden.
I was delighted to hook up with a distant cousin who had carefully organized family photos, quality ones, onto a thumb drive. the organization and the captioning was key to my enjoyment. If these things had been dumped into a box and hand it to me I would’ve been frantic with annoyance.
Once they are tossed, they are gone forever. But really, a mass of generations of family photos that has not been curated is indeed a burden.
My mother made noise about taking a weekend to “ go through boxes of photos” when I paid her a visit. I made a stab at it one time and found she was unable to toss any of them. I smiled, and put them back up on a high shelf in the closet saying I would look at them another time.
I won’t enter into cleaning/sorting/organizing project where I cannot throw anything away. It is a waste of my time otherwise.
i’m reaching the tail end of my book sorting work and I have now officially touched every book I own. That touch has to be productive. I touch it and it goes into the landfill or a pile for sale or the pile for the bookseller. I touch it and it goes into a pile to keep. I touch it and it goes into a pile that is ...questionable about keeping because I probably love it, but do I love it enough to keep? This last category will be “touched twice” books. And some of them will probably even be touched three times.
I believe I have reduced everything to the available bookshelves I have in our living room. Somewhere around 200 books from 800 books so that is progress.
As I do this, I spoke aloud to DH about my sorting criteria, how I’m going about it, my plan to finish it, and etc. – just to give him an idea as to here’s how you organize and clean out stuff. He is going to have a huge day of reckoning when the time comes that we leave our city house and everything in it belongs to him. And he has to clean it out. Wont be my problem.
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