Oh dear, I've thought the same. In fact, the rarity makes the pictures of the past more interesting. When we really thought my father was dying, I was tasked by an elder brother with going through family photos in order to make a slide show which has become a fixture at funerals down here. I was none too pleased with this assignment, hav…
Oh dear, I've thought the same. In fact, the rarity makes the pictures of the past more interesting. When we really thought my father was dying, I was tasked by an elder brother with going through family photos in order to make a slide show which has become a fixture at funerals down here. I was none too pleased with this assignment, having little interest in such things nor expectation that attendees do either - and no experience scanning or creating a digital photo collection; but certain tasks fall to daughters. So I set about this. The process revealed that Mother had far more photo albums than I realized (no one had ever opened them since she had haphazardly filled them, not particularly in any order, and put them high on a shelf; as a child I had looked at the *one* then extant because I was the baby, and I wanted to see what the family had been without me, an idea I found strange, and what my brothers had looked like as sweet (!) little kids). There was also a *much* smaller number of longer-ago B&W photos, of parents and of the elders ...
First: there has been some pleasure in sharing certain photos I've come across, some of which my brothers enjoyed sharing with their kids. On the phone. One, the only one, of parents in their engagement period, was quickly dubbed "Angel and the Bad Boy".
Everyone prefers the older photos, even the ones from our childhood seem more interesting, having that vintage photo feel and different cars and clothes and such. And a kind of running theme of our often sullen expressions (you couldn't instantly pick and choose then, take a dozen digital snaps, discard, and ensure that everyone is thrilled all the time). Which now seems funny though it actually reflected a genuinely troubled atmosphere at the time. And makes the ones where we seem happy, even nicer.
They are just inherently more interesting. The ones of the grandparents/great-grandparents even more so. A single photo of maternal grandparents at the time of their wedding (no wedding dress then, you just wore your best dress) - they look like Scott and Zelda, far more memorable than a dozen photos. My staid, respectable banker paternal grandfather looked as a young man, like a street brawler out of a Hollywood movie.
The thing is, no one wants an amorphous mass of photos any more than we want Mother's collection of Toby jugs and teacups and blue willow, so I am trying to cull - realizing the same should be done for my own, mostly from the childhood of my only child, and from trips.
And it's really hard to figure out who or what I am saving all this for. Yet one can't just dump them all at once.
And if you've got a little OCD as I do, it's even harder. For instance, I had pretty periods and less pretty periods, as a child/girl/woman. I thought, I'll keep only flattering photos of myself. But my compulsiveness wouldn't permit me to do that.
My nuclear family was: three kids; there are two spouses currently; and four grandchildren among us. None of us are now close, and the photos are a record that we once spent all our time together, which now seems unbelievable. It might be less poignant and fraught if we were necessarily still in each other's lives in that customary way.
It's almost as though: I've looked at these photos and I am the last person that ever needs to. I am "curating" a small box for each brother; but the remainder seem to be my own black hole to deal with.
Oh dear, I've thought the same. In fact, the rarity makes the pictures of the past more interesting. When we really thought my father was dying, I was tasked by an elder brother with going through family photos in order to make a slide show which has become a fixture at funerals down here. I was none too pleased with this assignment, having little interest in such things nor expectation that attendees do either - and no experience scanning or creating a digital photo collection; but certain tasks fall to daughters. So I set about this. The process revealed that Mother had far more photo albums than I realized (no one had ever opened them since she had haphazardly filled them, not particularly in any order, and put them high on a shelf; as a child I had looked at the *one* then extant because I was the baby, and I wanted to see what the family had been without me, an idea I found strange, and what my brothers had looked like as sweet (!) little kids). There was also a *much* smaller number of longer-ago B&W photos, of parents and of the elders ...
First: there has been some pleasure in sharing certain photos I've come across, some of which my brothers enjoyed sharing with their kids. On the phone. One, the only one, of parents in their engagement period, was quickly dubbed "Angel and the Bad Boy".
Everyone prefers the older photos, even the ones from our childhood seem more interesting, having that vintage photo feel and different cars and clothes and such. And a kind of running theme of our often sullen expressions (you couldn't instantly pick and choose then, take a dozen digital snaps, discard, and ensure that everyone is thrilled all the time). Which now seems funny though it actually reflected a genuinely troubled atmosphere at the time. And makes the ones where we seem happy, even nicer.
They are just inherently more interesting. The ones of the grandparents/great-grandparents even more so. A single photo of maternal grandparents at the time of their wedding (no wedding dress then, you just wore your best dress) - they look like Scott and Zelda, far more memorable than a dozen photos. My staid, respectable banker paternal grandfather looked as a young man, like a street brawler out of a Hollywood movie.
The thing is, no one wants an amorphous mass of photos any more than we want Mother's collection of Toby jugs and teacups and blue willow, so I am trying to cull - realizing the same should be done for my own, mostly from the childhood of my only child, and from trips.
And it's really hard to figure out who or what I am saving all this for. Yet one can't just dump them all at once.
And if you've got a little OCD as I do, it's even harder. For instance, I had pretty periods and less pretty periods, as a child/girl/woman. I thought, I'll keep only flattering photos of myself. But my compulsiveness wouldn't permit me to do that.
My nuclear family was: three kids; there are two spouses currently; and four grandchildren among us. None of us are now close, and the photos are a record that we once spent all our time together, which now seems unbelievable. It might be less poignant and fraught if we were necessarily still in each other's lives in that customary way.
It's almost as though: I've looked at these photos and I am the last person that ever needs to. I am "curating" a small box for each brother; but the remainder seem to be my own black hole to deal with.