Pictures of Nothing Can Mean Something

A few years ago, I took pictures of a documents in several court case files at the Library of Virginia. The various briefs, filings, affidavits, etc. were of varying lengths. Images were made of each entire document. I photographed them consistently as best I could, the “cover,” the individual pages, any blank pages, etc.

The images could be sorted based upon when they were taken and that was helpful.

But because the documents are of inconsistent length it can occasionally be easy to confuse them. It dawned on me what I should have done when I finished photographing a document: taken a picture of the blank table or a blank piece of paper–anything to indicate a break between documents.