What do you do with old photos?

Binders circa 1930

My mother asked, “What will you do with all my photographs when I’m gone?”

Being her smart aleck kid, I said, “They’re going with you.”

The joke’s on me, though. After sorting through a small fraction of inventory during her move from house to apartment, I developed a sentimental attachment to quite a few.

The problem is she has several large plastic bins filled with family photos. I don’t know how she collected so many, because I don't recall ever seeing her with camera in hand. My brother thinks digitizing them is the answer. I don’t know if it’s worth the trouble and, even if it was, would we really be able to throw away the old prints?

This is more than a philosophical question for me. I printed my first black & white photos in a small science-class darkroom in junior high. In high school, I converted a closet into a part-time darkroom and continued printing there. For a few years, I worked for a pharmaceutical giant as a photographic specialist. There I furthered my skills printing photographs used, in those pre-PowerPoint days, in business presentations and also for product publicity and scientific test results. One perk of the job was the freedom to print my own work as well.

A recent and rare sighting: 35 mm film on store shelves.

Now I have a walk-in closet packed with slides, contact sheets, negative sleeves, and prints, prints, and more prints. Compounding the problem (or the riches) is the fact my husband is an avid photographer, and so we also have boxes of prints cataloguing his early years of documenting events for family and friends. If it weren’t for digital photography, we would have had to build an addition years ago to hold our growing collection of images.

Lately, I’ve taken to giving old photos to the people who are in them. I don’t know if I’m doing them any favors, as most focus on how young they used to look 20, 25, even 30 years ago. Seems no one likes to be reminded about time marching on.

And so my closet shelves will continue to groan under the weight of boxes of memories of years past, barely lightened by the few photos I manage to give away. If I can avoid adding to the stockpile, and not inherit my mother’s stash of photographs, I will consider myself a very, very lucky girl.

Saving Amy

Suddenly I’m surrounded by the past. Old 8mm movies. Childhood pictures. Audio tapes of my days in college radio and my brother’s first band. My mother was a saver, and now that she is downsizing, she’s giving her children all their mementos.

The quality of these remnants isn’t always the best. You have to strain your eyes or your ears to discern detail, and the gist is really all that comes through.

The problem with much of the media is that it’s old technology. My husband had to scavenge two 8mm projectors to get one that works semi-reliably. Some of the pictures have adhered permanently to their album pages. And the audio tapes are either reel-to-reel, for which machines are a rarity, or cassettes, for which I still have machines, but the cassettes themselves have their own playback issues.

At one point, years ago, my father edited and transferred his trove of home movies from film to VHS tape. Then he must have thrown out the original film, because we haven’t been able to find it. As for the VHS, well, when I was able to find a player, the tape was in such bad shape that all I saw was snow.  One VHS tape had a promising title, about a holiday family dinner back before I was born, but that had been recorded over with some old television show. So much for preserving memories in media.

At first I bemoaned the loss of the sights and sounds of family and the way we were. Then, when this last batch of memorabilia surfaced, and I could hear my old newscasts, and my brother’s saxophone solos, I wasn’t so sure they were worth preserving. Things sounded so much better in my mind. I remember the circumstances around each recording, and the memories are kinder and clearer than these saved snippets.

I really don’t need to be reminded about the imperfections. I’d rather focus on the experiences I had and how they motivated me to continue discovering new things. Passions for radio and photography have faded, but other interests took their place. And then they faded as newer interests came along.

Over the years, I tried my hand at learning Hebrew and French. I entered 10k races and a half marathon. I rode bicycles. I hiked. I went to concerts and plays. I lived in the city and then the suburbs. I traveled overseas. I gardened. I took up yoga and mindful meditation.

There’s only so much time in the day, so it makes sense that interests would wax and wane. The lesson I’ve learned is to just keep learning, to find whatever that next thing may be.

And there’s only so much space in my house, so I really don’t want to save all the ephemera of my life. There’s much more room in my imagination to store memories of people and places and interests gone by – with lots of room left over for what’s ahead.

When negatives prove valuable

This story begins with a picture taken decades ago and ends this week, following a funeral, a mystery, and a mix of technologies. 

I was attending the funeral for a beloved aunt. While paying respects to the family, I glimpsed a photograph that looked familiar. It was taken in my parent’s home. By me. More than 30 years ago.

In the photo, my aunt and uncle were sitting together, looking happy and peaceful. But who was the woman at the end of the couch? This was one of the few photos of my aunt and uncle together at that time -- he died not too long after -- I was determined to find out what I could about the third party.

To unravel the mystery of an early 1980s color print, I snapped a picture of the framed photo with my smartphone and emailed it to several family members. A cousin confirmed it was taken at her bridal shower, and the unknown woman was from her father’s family.

I shared this information with the grieving family, glad to put a date, occasion, and name to the photo. Still, I wasn’t satisfied. I had taken the shot, so surely I must have more photos somewhere from that day.

I visited my photo archive, also known as the top shelf of a rarely used bedroom closet. I combed through boxes of photos, but couldn’t find anything. I flipped through pages of slides; still, no success.

Finally, I dragged down an overstuffed binder of negative sleeves and contact prints. Depending how young you are, that previous sentence probably made no sense. Let’s just say I went through my old photography paraphernalia and found exactly what I was looking for.

So now what? I really wanted my cousins to have a nice picture of their parents, just the two of them, without the unrelated woman crowding in. I pulled the negative and handed it to my husband, who's more tech savvy. I thought he could erase the third person from the couch through some software wizardry, but I’ve been watching too much CSI on TV.

He took an old-fashioned approach using much newer technology. Basically, he scanned the negative into PhotoShop, adjusted color and contrast, cropped in close on my aunt and uncle, and then saved it as a .JPG. I emailed the new version to family members and, if they wanted, they could get an actual print to replace the old framed one by sending it to anyone from Walgreens to Shutterfly to Mpix. 

Only later did I reflect on the technologies involved in bringing new life to an old photo, taken with a 35mm SLR camera. Again, depending on your age, you may not know the camera reference, but you could always look it up on your smartphone.

I had been tempted once or twice to throw away all my old negatives. I couldn’t imagine ever printing them again. Now I know they’re a valuable resource and a tether to my past. As for printing, well that has taken on new meaning when you can email images and have prints ready for pickup or arrive in the mail.

Once again I find new technology never really replaces old technology. Drawing on the strengths of each, you get the best of both worlds. In this case, a positive negative.

Cloud cover isn’t picture perfect

There’s my granddad. Up on the ledge. Legs hanging over. Nearest the American flag. Watching Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower in what remains the largest parade in New York City’s history, in June 1945. Celebrating Germany’s surrender in World War II.

I found this picture while combing through old photo albums with my mother. On the back, my grandmother had written a sweet note to her son, my father, who was then serving in the Navy.

My friend is on a similar search for family history. He recently emailed about an upcoming trip to visit an aunt in Florida. “I'm taking a sharpie so she can identify people in her photo albums.”

With photo albums on my mind, I started sorting through my own stash. I removed photos from the “magnetic” albums, where a clear plastic overlay sticks to the page…and, as I found out, also discolors and damages the photos. But I have thousands of photos – from wallet size to 11 x 14 prints – stored in drawers and boxes and photo sleeves. They span my early explorations with cameras right up until I grew bored with snapping the same family celebrations, year after year after year.

Then digital cameras and, even better, smartphones became the tool to use. Where are these pictures stored? In my computer. On CDs. Saved on USB drives. A few uploaded to the cloud.

As I replied to my friend with the sharpie: It’s hard to think digital photos will ever have as much impact as stumbling across the Eisenhower photo. It's too easy to tuck them away in digital storage. “Will next generations take the time to search?”

His short answer: “No.” I think he’s right. While digital photos are certainly searchable, you often don’t know what you’re looking for – or at. And out of sight is certainly out of mind.

Nothing beats sitting shoulder to shoulder on a couch, flipping through pages to reveal long-gone relatives, while teasing out stories of days past. Huddling around a computer (or notepad or other electronic device) just isn’t the same. There are no charming handwritten notes on the back. And one bad swipe, missed click, or timeout and my tech-adverse mother loses interest. 

She still has my late father's computer, on which there are lots of family photos, but she never turns it on. If we want her to see the latest photos, we email them to the local Walgreens, which prints them out and calls her to pick them up.

She only keeps the computer around so my siblings and I can print out boarding passes when we visit. And for that small favor, I am grateful.