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Discover Mid-America — May 2004

Preserve your photographic memories

A friend and I were talking about the use of digital cameras by so many families nowadays. Because we are involved with historic preservation, we are always looking for those things that are disappearing from our daily, mundane lives. If each one of us would stop and think, we would find that there are any number of ordinary things that are going to be tomorrow’s treasures.

Some family photographs fare better than others. Casey Ward, General Manager of Mission Road Antique Mall, made sure to note the date and location this portrait of her grandmother Betty LaBrant was taken.

In attending a fiftieth anniversary party recently, my friends’ family had a marvelous presentation at the end of the dinner. This was done with PowerPoint®, using ordinary black and white (they were married in 1954) snapshot photographs. The guests were surprised to find that these young people had really dug in the boxes, the albums and other stashes to find at least one picture of each person that attended. It was a wonderful story of their married life, the places they had been, the children in birth order. All this had been done from still ordinary photographs that had been taken over the years. The picture I was in was scanned from a newspaper photo taken in 1968!

With the use of digital cameras today, we are on the way to losing a lot of family pictorial history. Now with a flick of the button, the unlikely poses are discarded, and the others are put into a computer. Then when that computer and its discs become outmoded, where will the picture album be? When my husband’s grandmother passed, a cousin decided to pass out the photos in the boxes that Mama kept them in. On a visit to several of these cousins, here came the old family pictures, and on the back were the names of said old timers... in my handwriting! Then I remembered, that on various Sunday afternoons, when the box came out, my husband asked Mama if she remembered who these people in the pictures were. As her mind stayed sharp until the very end, I wrote the names and places she dictated. The family is so grateful that someone took the time to do this.

So I have begun, in the last few years, to write on the back the date, occasion and the people in the picture. I am more and more aware that this information has to be written before the time passes and I forget when and where. It would behoove us to keep our old cameras and not give up the old way of preserving family pictures. This new technology is wonderful for things like newspaper, magazine and television production. But for ordinary folks like you and me, having the picture of the bridesmaid catching the bride’s bouquet, the baby’s first tooth, the fiftieth anniversary portrait to show off to family, friends, or bored visitors, will one day be priceless.

So, keep you Kodak® or Fuji moment...your grandchildren will be thankful!

> Is This An Antique? Archive — past columns