originally posted in one of my albums yesterday but repeated here due to the magnificent response from members who thought it should receive a wider audience.
Three sisters . . .
. . . but who are they?
. . . and why are their identities kept secret?
I have just read and responded to a sad tale posted on this site about a pile of photographs accumulated by a member who was having difficulty identifying them because there was nothing written on the back of the prints, and I could not help thinking how sad it was that any photograph which had been taken presumably to preserve memories or to share personal memories with friends or acquaintances should over time cease to have any significance, all for the want of a hastily scribbled word, name or date to trigger a replay of the occasion, place or people shown in the picture.
Such a sorry state of affairs need not happen in today’s digital age because it is so easy to embed a description in the stored image via its title and the time and date stored automatically by the camera, but images taken before the digital age really need to be researched and captioned now, while they are still in living memory.
The photograph at the top of this page is an example. I do not know who took it, and there is nobody alive today who can offer any information about it or identify the three young girls in the picture, although I can make a semi-educated guess that they night be three of the four sisters of whom my late-in-life loving partner was one. Sadly Kate died earlier this year and I found the photo in a drawer among her clothes and personal possessions with no clues whatsoever.
The mounted print had clearly been framed at some time, and must have been important to the girls’ parents, now long departed, but that seems to be the end of the road for this once treasured memory and I find that very sad because “every picture tells a story” and I firmly believe that the story comes into existence at the very moment the button is pressed, and the visual image acts merely as a trigger to re-engage the thoughts that caused it to be taken., and I now wonder whether my Kate, the youngest of four, was one of the three in the picture, taken perhaps by the eldest or one of their parents, or if these were the first three, photographed before Kate was born . . . but for the want of a written note I shall never know the answer.
What I can say with confidence is that the final eight months of her life were well documented. Well aware that as we were both in our eighties our partnership might not have long to run, we went out every day that health and other circumstances allowed, enjoying those precious months to the full and creating three albums of permanent memories in words and pictures, many of which we also posted on 365, where they will enjoy an extended life and tell our story long after we have both departed, for as long as the site remains in existence, but even after that it is an absolute certainty that copies will exist in cyberspace with all the information intact, should anyone be sufficiently interested to look and read about them.
I feel I must repeat yet again what I have said so many times before, that a photograph is only part of a story, adding visual information and drawing attention to the equally important words . . . but as a journalist I would say that, wouldn’t I?
So, if you love photography, keep snapping and carry on - but do please let others into the secret of what your pictures are all about, and why you took them. You might even want to look back on your life yourself, one day.
these words are beautiful Arthur - I have non digital images of my daughters when they were younger and I tried to label the packets with dates and places but I have come across some that I am not %100 sure about - now all my digitals are saved under dates and if it is an important event the name of said event is included
Totally agree, I need to go through some of my Mom's and Nanna's photos as I am the only member in the family who would remember who most of the family members are as I am the eldest. Thanks for posting this Arthur I'll spend a few week-ends sorting through so my family with have these treasures and know who they are.
Now I will take the position of devil's advocate and ask, "In the long run, what will it matter?" I read somewhere that aside from important historical figures, a person's story dies when the last person who remembers them dies as well. Do you think that will really change because there are photos with dates and names. I'm sure a person exploring his family tree will delight in finding such a treasure trove, but I sure wouldn't feel too guilty if I haven't documented the participants of every birthday party and family vacation.
I find myself really moved by your sentiments and timely advice, Arthur. When my husband's mother died, the eldest of the four children stored all the boxes of family photos away, promising to sort through them and share them out. That was several years ago. I reminded him recently that as he approaches 65 and will retire soon, perhaps the time has come to deal with them. Certainly there will be many that are already unidentifiable but this will only be made worse by the passing of time.
@nadaa@annied@aliha@cathrinemitch@allie912@lynnilou@julieco . . . Thank you all. I'm afraid we are all guilty at times of saying "I'll do it tomorrow . . ." and then don't, but a little gentle reminder might yet save today for the future..
Just finished making two Shutterfly family books (mine and one for my sister-in-law who wants it for her grandchildren) after scanning shots from old sacks - identifying who they were and their relationship. So many we couldn't do because we're the oldest living and nothing was written. But I can say that it was fun to do.
Timely advice indeed but PLEASE don't consider writing with ballpoint pen on the backs of pictures. The ink is sticky and when photos are piled on top of each other the ink comes off on the shot below. Despite telling my Dad this piece of advice a few years back he went ahead and labelled a large number of old photographs in ballpoint pen. The result? I had to do a lot of Photoshop work to remove the damage (and the original photos were ruined!)
I totally agree with you Arthur. Sadly my mum is suffering from dementia at the moment and a while back we brought down a big box of photo's from the attic hoping to jog her memory of people, times and places. Unfortunately she didn't recognise much of any of them but it may have helped jog her memory if there were clues on the back of them as to what they represented. It's sad to think of a life that one can't remember.
I agree with what you have written, Arthur, Now in my eighties--as you are-- I am making time to digitise many of my old family photos and to write what information is available on them. I have produced a number of half A4 spiral bound booklets Illustrated with these family photos and my own memories plus dates and any other information I have. I hope that they will be of interest to someone when I have left.
Oneof my greatest regrets is that my father's collection of photographs were thrown out after his death. He wqas a keen amateur photographer during his Army service in Egypt, Gallipoli and Palestine. He developed and contact printed all his own photos taken with a Vest Pocket Kodak camera. He pictured many scenes of local people in the places he served together with historic photos of the Gallipoli campaign. I was living in Germany at the time when my mother disposed of all his albums. I would have preserved them A great loss of historic material.
My parents bought this photo in a second-hand store about twenty years ago, where it was being sold for the value of the oak frame:
The only clue was the inscription of a photographer in Congleton, a town in Cheshire, in the bottom left corner. They bought it to preserve it, rather than to re-use the frame, and it hung in the house despite them being no relation to us, and we always wondered who it was!
Earlier this year, my Mum contacted the Congleton Family History Society, who then put her in touch with the local Congleton newspaper, who printed it asking if anyone knew the family. To cut a long story short, a few weeks later they handed it over to the great great granddaughter of the old lady in the photo.
Ahh...but just like the unmarked prints, my digital photos are mostly still named with the file number. Thank you for reminding me to start marking my digital photos that I want to keep for my kids!
I think my feelings about this fall in line with yours. By all means, if it gives someone joy to meticulously record names and dates on photos of family members and friends well then, they should do it and more power to them but honestly I very much doubt that anyone will care in a hundred years, or even in fifty.
Still it seems by the responses here that these feelings are in the minority.
I saw this on your project, Arthur, and am so glad you shared it in this thread. So important! I have some photos like this, and anyone I could ask has left this life. I went through thousands of my printed family photos and painstakingly labeled each one, I know my kids will appreciate it some day.
Wow Arthur to think that I inspired this!! I do have some hopeful news on my quest to identify some of those pictures. First I discovered that in a photo scrapbook album that I made my father awhile back, some of the "unknown" people were identified in different pictures and their connection to my father became clearer. Secondly, I realized that my aunt and uncle who were younger than my father will be able to see these pictures if I post them on facebook and then be able to help me with some of my questions. Sadly, I do not have the same ability to do that with my mother's side of the family. She, my uncle and one of her sisters have all passed and the last child, her youngest sister was in a severe car accident about 7 years ago and her memory is not what it used to be. Of the pictures I've been able to figure out, I have diligently recorded the info on the back of the picture now with an archival pen so the information will last for a long time!
Thankfully, 365 started as a writing project for me. Who knew I would love photography on a photography website? I'm known for my verbose reflections on the photo or the day or both if they coincide. If readers suffer through my long narratives, I say HOTDOG to them or they do to me and there are points awarded (not really, but really). I applaud your post here. I interviewed my grandmother (who lived to 103) in hopes of finding family info. I pulled out old photos without id's on them and asked her who each person was--then I wrote the info on the backs of the old photos. I never completed the mission, but I'll get to it eventually. I love investigating the past. But I also love things that are "anonymous" like poems, narratives, love stories--they are part of everyone's life. I'm rambling.
Well, the response here has been quite amazing and very instructive and I must thank all who have shared their thoughts on this matter. A quick analysis of the results has revealed divergent views, with fewer than one in five of those who have visited the discussion leaving a comment, but almost unanimous in recognizing the potential value of a well documented pictorial history of family life, and just a few asking in effect, “What does it matter?” Both views have substance, and the other 88% of people who viewed the discussion but decided not to take part in it are presumably too busy coping with the present to spend time thinking about the past or future, so this is not a rant but a simple reflection of the facts and I do of course respect the Devil's Advocate view of @allie912 and thank her for expressing it so clearly.
I have spent most of my 83 years on this planet asking “Who am I and where did I come from?” and have succeeded only in discovering that my parents were from humble backgrounds and left no written record of their existence; no family bible or journal nor any evidence that they ever read a book or wrote a letter, but there were a few unlabelled snapshots of an unidentified child (presumably my brother or myself) on an unidentified beach or squinting at the sun in a back garden, and a framed photograph of a wedding group, also unlabelled. I know that my maternal grandmother came from Ireland during “the Troubles” in the early 20th century and married an Englishman born in London’s deprived East End, and my paternal grandparents, also London born, lived in a two-bedroom terraced house in London’s docklands with their nine offspring, but there the trail goes cold and I have found no photographic evidence of their existence. That is why I am so keen to stress the importance of labelling photographs today, now that it is so easy to do so, perhaps more for the benefit of those still living and a searching for answers, than those not yet born.
I would like to say a special "Thank You" to @abirkill for the story of the "found and returned" framed photo. I have over the years bought and attempted to identify the people in old "carte de visite" priints but without success, but is has been an educational experience trying.
I share @traveller 's sorrow that his father's wartime photographs were not kept after his passing, as were so many other families' precious memories, so Thank you David for that comment, and all power to your elbow in digitising whatever family photographs are still in your possession.
I also appreciate the advice offered by @creampuff about NOT using ballpoint pens on photographs because I have also seen the damage they can cause, and finally must thank @olivetreeann whose original post inspired this discussion, as well as all others who have added their thoughts and personal experiences whose comments I have not answered individually but have read, absorbed and enjoyed. I suspect that you might be seeing further examples of this kind from me in the future as I delve deeper into the shadowy recesses of my mind and what remains of my photographic memories, now much depleted as the result of several house moves and down-sizing, but might yet rediscover a few hidden gems worth discussing.
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Oneof my greatest regrets is that my father's collection of photographs were thrown out after his death. He wqas a keen amateur photographer during his Army service in Egypt, Gallipoli and Palestine. He developed and contact printed all his own photos taken with a Vest Pocket Kodak camera. He pictured many scenes of local people in the places he served together with historic photos of the Gallipoli campaign. I was living in Germany at the time when my mother disposed of all his albums. I would have preserved them A great loss of historic material.
The only clue was the inscription of a photographer in Congleton, a town in Cheshire, in the bottom left corner. They bought it to preserve it, rather than to re-use the frame, and it hung in the house despite them being no relation to us, and we always wondered who it was!
Earlier this year, my Mum contacted the Congleton Family History Society, who then put her in touch with the local Congleton newspaper, who printed it asking if anyone knew the family. To cut a long story short, a few weeks later they handed it over to the great great granddaughter of the old lady in the photo.
I think my feelings about this fall in line with yours. By all means, if it gives someone joy to meticulously record names and dates on photos of family members and friends well then, they should do it and more power to them but honestly I very much doubt that anyone will care in a hundred years, or even in fifty.
Still it seems by the responses here that these feelings are in the minority.
@abirkill that is a great story!!
I have spent most of my 83 years on this planet asking “Who am I and where did I come from?” and have succeeded only in discovering that my parents were from humble backgrounds and left no written record of their existence; no family bible or journal nor any evidence that they ever read a book or wrote a letter, but there were a few unlabelled snapshots of an unidentified child (presumably my brother or myself) on an unidentified beach or squinting at the sun in a back garden, and a framed photograph of a wedding group, also unlabelled. I know that my maternal grandmother came from Ireland during “the Troubles” in the early 20th century and married an Englishman born in London’s deprived East End, and my paternal grandparents, also London born, lived in a two-bedroom terraced house in London’s docklands with their nine offspring, but there the trail goes cold and I have found no photographic evidence of their existence. That is why I am so keen to stress the importance of labelling photographs today, now that it is so easy to do so, perhaps more for the benefit of those still living and a searching for answers, than those not yet born.
I would like to say a special "Thank You" to @abirkill for the story of the "found and returned" framed photo. I have over the years bought and attempted to identify the people in old "carte de visite" priints but without success, but is has been an educational experience trying.
I share @traveller 's sorrow that his father's wartime photographs were not kept after his passing, as were so many other families' precious memories, so Thank you David for that comment, and all power to your elbow in digitising whatever family photographs are still in your possession.
I also appreciate the advice offered by @creampuff about NOT using ballpoint pens on photographs because I have also seen the damage they can cause, and finally must thank @olivetreeann whose original post inspired this discussion, as well as all others who have added their thoughts and personal experiences whose comments I have not answered individually but have read, absorbed and enjoyed. I suspect that you might be seeing further examples of this kind from me in the future as I delve deeper into the shadowy recesses of my mind and what remains of my photographic memories, now much depleted as the result of several house moves and down-sizing, but might yet rediscover a few hidden gems worth discussing.
Three photographs which I can positively identify. The one on the left was taken by my old school friend, @traveller ; the others were not.
Thanks again everybody for viewing and taking part in this discussion.