This summer I spent some time with my brother going through boxes of old pictures, most of them from before either of us were born. Mom and Dad were easy to recognize, but most of the other people were mysteries. Only one picture had anything written on the back, and what was written there was of no help to us. The photo was of a woman asleep on the grass and on the back it said “Eliza Rip Van Winkle.”Apparently, Eliza, whoever she was, took an extra long nap that day. Eliza featured in a number of outdoor, fun photos. But neither my brother nor I had ever heard of Eliza. Was she one of Mom’s friends? An early one of Uncle Joey’s numerous wives? We eventually decided that a man, also in a number of photos, including a few with Eliza, was Uncle Joey, someone I had never met. My brother, as a preteen, had met Joey, but it was years after those pictures were taken and people change.
We’re now in a world where everyone takes pictures of everyone and everything, including their lunch. Will all those pictures eventually prove to be someone else’s mystery? Will they be lost when the phone they’re on is lost or upgraded?
I think it would be helpful for people to print and maintain in an album representative pictures marked with names and dates—“Aunt Mary Smith, 1936” for example. And since people change, examples of those changes should be kept. Aunt Mary might have gained or lost a lot of weight or worn glasses sometimes and not others or was fond of changing her hair color.
Photos archived electronically should have their names—usually a string of letters and numbers indicating the device that produced it and the date—changed to something meaningful. You know who those people are and the occasion on which the picture was taken, but wouldn’t it be good to leave your grandkids a key to figure out the rest of the collection when they find it later?