How many studio portraits of your Grandmother do you need? Some genealogists have to ask that question–or a very similar one. It’s not easy to decide and it’s not easy to cull things from a collection of family artifacts and memorabilia. But sometimes it needs to happen. Collections need to be curated.
I have numerous prints of studio portraits of my maternal grandparents. Some I have a half a dozen copies of. They have been digitized and identified. The question is: how many physical copies do I keep? I cannot keep them all. I have decided to keep no more than two copies of any one pose or setting. That is it (and that may be too much). The others will have to be recycled.
If I only had two photos of my grandparents, it would be different. But that’s not my situation. My grandparents have two grandchildren, not twenty-two. While it may sound harsh, sometimes ephemera needs to be culled from a collection of materials to maximize the chance that the collection as a whole survives as long as possible.
The larger and more unwieldly a collection is, the higher the chance that at some point it is not preserved or someone else decides what goes. I would rather that person be me.
6 Responses
If I had too many copies of photos, I’d decide them among my children first, then among other family members such as cousins.
Sometimes that is an option and sometimes it is not. In my case there’s still entirely more pictures than people to be interested in them.
Michael, I know that I haven’t been “doing genealogy “ nearly as long as you but I was just recently contacted by a second cousin who is too young to be in the 1960 census. I knew she existed but had no idea where or what her married name or address might be. She is in the process of writing a book about her uncle who was killed in France the day after D day & her father who served as a bombardier throughout WW2 & no one in her family has ever spent much time on family history. I’m glad that I can send her copies online of some family photos of her grandmother & some of my dad who was the first cousin of her dad & uncle although they never met because they were born & lived in what would have been considered great distances then. I’m hoping to send her originals of some photos that my sister probably took with her although at the time of my mother’s death, we had agreed that all family photos would go into an archive at the home if my eldest niece. The idea was to identify as many photos as possible, put them in archival quality containers & make copies of them available to anyone in the family wanted one. It’s been a challenge partly because my sister was probably already suffering from the dementia that eventually took her life & wandered off to Canada with some photos which may still be there.
Even the smallest family may develop unknown extended members who are interested in your photos, & while I understand your inclination to cull, please be cautious. Also historical societies, libraries, & those which are yet to be created may be interested in photos not because they are your specific relatives but because of dress or other elements of the period. The town where I was born has established two new historical museums in the last 20 years & I don’t think it is the only small place which has done this. Studio portraits may not be as interesting at other types of photos, but when it comes to great-grandparents, I have a few that I would like to see even one photo of.
I make sure that anything I cull related to family goes out to descendants of that family member. I remember thinking that it would have been nice to have had pictures of great grandma or grandpa but knowing that the cousins who were left to deal with their father’s estate just through boxes and boxes of photos and letter and personal items into the dumpster/tip.
While I have control, the copies and extras relating to people go out to the family historian that may have popped up in the latest generation.
Good idea. This is why it’s important for those with an interest in family history to reach out to other family members so that they are aware of the person’s interest.
It’s a good idea to ask relatives every so often if they want things like this. I’ve been a Family Historian for 35 years. My extended family knows this. All of a sudden someone popped up and says they’re looking too. I had no idea.