FASC Rat

We take thousands of images of a myriad of subjects, but what will happen to those images after the photographer passes on? I'm sixty-four now and have been thinking about my image archive and what value it may have for my children, other relatives, friends, classmates, and researchers. Not all images have historical value, but some may have. If you look back at other photographers' work, then you can get a sense of what interest your work may have. A city skyline of Battery Park, NYC before 911 does not look the same as it does now. The Mall in DC has changed a lot over the last thirty years. The wedding photo taken in the 1940s contrasted to one taken in the 1970s is certainly different.

Do you have any plans for your images? I have been thinking of the local historical society and the nearby university. I haven't contacted them yet. I would like to know what they would consider wanting, in what form, and to whom they would grant access. Not many institutions have archival facilities to house great amounts of negatives, photos, or slides of a family's lifetime, but the documented "Who, what, when, where, and why" makes an image valuable.


I have two albums of photographs that my mother took when she was an Army nurse serving in the south Pacific with the Fourth General Hospital. She took photos of where she went, who she met, and some of what she did in Australia, New Guinea, and the Philippines. What the censor did not have her cut out can be pieced together with her diary and letters from that time period.


My collection of family cat photos would have little worth to the local historical society but my sister likes them. The photo of the city's train station before it was torn down may be interesting for the historical society. The images I took for the high school yearbook has value for my classmates. The facebook accounts for the units I served with in the Marines enjoy looking at the photos I took while I was in. The Calflora website likes the little bit of data that I supplied them with about plants in the local area. But the vast majority of my collection has not been digitized and may never be digitized because of time, expense, and much of it is not of specialized interest.


What are your plans for images after you pass on? Will they fade slowly in the night or burn in the fires of forgetfulness? Are they worth the effort of preserving? For my part, I will continue to catalogue, document, and digitize as much as I find worth the effort. In the future someone may find it interesting if they can access it.

SharpShooter Loc: NorCal

I have absolutely no plan!
But I'm only 67, so hopefully have a few more decades before I have to plan!!! LoL
I'm serious.
SS

Ched49 Loc: Pittsburgh, Pa.

No plans at all. When I'm out of here, my son will probably take over the collection. When my Mother and Father passed, my oldest brother got their collection and I made copies of them.

bbrowner Loc: Chapel Hill, NC

Remember... nothing is forever!

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

My kids can have them. Whether they want them would be a different story.
I know they would want all of the family shots.

dkguill Loc: Elkhart, IN

Your question is an interesting one. I, at 75, have thought a bit about what to do with my thousands of photos as well. At one point my wife and I became interested in Genealogy and we devoted considerable time to collecting historical family information. The result is a sizable collection of digitized photos most of which are annotated with family names. We cataloged the family members in one of the many computer programs designed to organize family history. I suspect that this material will be passed on to our children and grandchildren, but I'm not sure how long it will be kept. As far as my archive of commercial images taken for business clients is concerned, I have admonished those companies to take steps to catalog their product images for historical reference. My experience is that today's companies place very little value on recording the past and those images will be soon scrapped in favor of disc space recovery or ignorance of employees. Not my problem says I. My children will be given the remaining artsy-fartsy images which are mostly identified by date and location. They may or may not see long-term value in keeping them around and printing a few for their walls. I suspect that those will mostly end up on the hard drives upon which they now reside, placed in some semi-secure location along with the family photos, and eventually forgotten completely. All of this prediction reflects my experience working with others over the years. All good intentions tend to fall by the wayside eventually. Not having been identified as an "artist" in the public eye during my lifetime means that what I value in the images I have captured is not likely to carry over to the opinions of others, and rightfully so. Like the tomb stones that may or may not survive the cemetery vandals of tomorrow, the images I have labored over are most likely going to end up as the victims of a future house-cleaning.

One Rude Dawg Loc: Athol, ID

Don't care, won't care..........about anything. Won't have a say.

FASC Rat

Maybe I should have asked the question of whether or not you thought any of your images might be of value to someone else. Having a "plan" may mean wrapping an anchor chair around the benefactor and saying "enjoy." I received my mother's photo albums but not my father's. That's okay, I still have access to my father's and I have digitized most of them. My mother's are more numerous and consisted of the dreaded "magnetic photo albums" that can have a death grip on the pictures when you attempt to remove them. Many of the photos do not have identification but I can add a little of what I know.

donrosshill Loc: Delaware & Florida

You pose a great question. I now have to diligently start cataloging and find a place to store my Images.
I an 83 and have made my living in Imaging for 65 of them.
Thanks for the reminder.
Don

MCHUGH Loc: Jacksonville, Texas

About two years ago I contacted the local historical society and ask them if they wanted all the negatives from the years that owned my photography business. They were overwhelmingly happy to get them. I live in a small town and took portraits and did commercial work for all social and economic levels. Even 40 years back shows a lot of changes. I am sure most of the photos I take now days will end up in the trash when I am gone but I really don't care anymore.

FASC Rat

My wife made about twenty albums for my daughter and son during their pre-adult years. When they left home, they also left their albums. Someday they may retrieve them.


My son called awhile back to say that the RAID 1 array that he had on his computer went bad. He didn't have a backup and lost all of his digitial photos and music. Negatives and prints still have value.

FASC Rat

Quite true. I don't believe that my work has great value but in the short time of its existence someone may find some worth in mining it. Before and after pictures show us something.

FASC Rat

From the billions of pictures take with cell phones there will be few retained. The determination of value will vary from person to person and institution to institution. I wonder what our photo heritage would be like if we had access to some of the images scraped off of those old glassplate negatives that made way for new negatives.

You can't keep everything, but how can you decide which to save while living in this time and place? Humans have been living for generations without likenesses of their ancestors to peruse. Previously, only the well-to-do could afford a painted portrait to hang in the family mansion.

Part of what makes an image valuable is documentation, technical and artistic presentation, rarity, historic significance, relation to the observer, and ability to access.

Barn Owl

The number one recommendation I would make in archiving photos would be certain they are digitized. Next, I would buy a program called Breeze Browser Pro. (There is a learning curve.) That British program will allow you to take each one of your photos and IPTC data that you want to include on each photo. The IPTC information will be there but will only be accessible when wanted. Within the Breeze Brower Pro program, you can design HTML presentations that will allow you to click through all your IPTC info. I am very opinioned about old photos that do not have labels. What function do they serve in the bottom of a drawer or shelf with no labels? Finally, you can save all the labeled digitized photos and sort them by topic, year, family, etc. on an extra external hard drive. If you are wise, you will then consider storing that hard drive in your bank’s safety deposit box. The hard drive will need to be updated and maybe replaced from time to time. In probably less than ten years, all those files will have to be stored in a new media. At least, the digitals will be in edited and properly identified. From there, where you donated or gift to a family member or society becomes much easier. By the way, don’t neglect to use the delete key when editing old photos that don’t qualify for important natural history, social history and/or family memories. You can save a bunch of frustration for future interested viewers.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

One key to making (or keeping) your photos valuable to the future is documentation.
I have a box full of family photos (prints). About 1/3 of them are useful. The rest are undocumented. No names attached to them. Don't even know if they're part of the family.

If you have prints, write on the back.
If you have only digital files, find a way to attach documentation to them that will carry over when the file is copied. A separate word processor file will not hack it. The information can go into the metadata as a last resort, but it would be best if it could be printed as part of the image when the image file is printed. That probably means adding white space to the image and placing text there.