The photo conundrum

Last week I was looking for a particular photo among all the printed photos that we have stored in boxes and folders and envelopes. To be sure, I was not even certain we had a photo that met my needs (more about that another time) so it was necessary to look at all the prints we had. Do you know how many pictures that is?

You do remember printed photos don't you? You know, that's what we used to get after we had used up the roll of film. Printed photographs. Two sets; one for us and one to share. Now, the only prints we need are for the ubiquitous Christmas card with all the kids and cousins on it. Or the occasional 5x7 to update the frames on the shelf.

Do you know how many printed photos one can acquire if you predate the digital age a hundred years or so? A lot. Albums of them. Boxes of them. Tubs of them. And I'm not even going to mention the 100 or so boxes of 35mm slides that we've collected along the way. And that's the conundrum. What does one do with them?

We have about a dozen albums full of family photos in nice archive-friendly protective sleeves. They are the result of a project to move the oldest snapshots out of corrosive albums that were slowly destroying the pictures. You know, the sticky plastic overlay pages, and even worse, the glued-down to black construction paper pages. But what about the boxes - literally - of prints that came back from Wal-Wherever, that we looked at, talked about, and then but back in the envelopes and consigned to the box?

Even worse, as a result of inheriting my mother's genealogical records, I have boxes of very old photographs; many from the portrait studio, and many in a wide variety of sizes and shapes. My immediate family members I recognize (for the most part) but fully half of the subjects in these old pictures are unknown to me. Unless there is a name penciled on the back, these folks are forever lost historically. So I am certain that these pictures will remain in the box.

But it may also be too late for pictures from the modern era as well. I'm sure there was a reason to take 24 photographs of a mountainside probably in Colorado - or was it New Mexico? - but I can't remember why. Or when. Once upon a time pictures had dates recorded on them, but that went out of style. Anybody know who these people are standing by this waterfall? Where was this? Hon, do you remember? Hmm. Me neither.

Put them in scrapbooks, you say? Do you know how old I am? I might not even be able to put them in archive-friendly sleeves, and for sure I would spend the kid's inheritance doing so. Oh well. The kids will know what to do with them when the time comes.