I’m wondering what to do with all the family photos that go back more than 100 years. I hate seeing them displayed at flea markets and antique centers and I doubt the men in my family (I’m the only woman among brothers, cousins, uncles) want them.
I’m thinking of destroying them.
My mother in law is the same way, and I can’t say I disagree either. We are always saying “how could someone disregard their great grandparents that way?! Don’t they even care about where they came from?” Or in my case I assume sadly that they’ve gotten into drugs or something related to general societal decay. It’s a symptom.
But, on the upside, people are doing lovely things with old photos nowadays. Look around on Pinterest or etsy and you might be encouraged to donate them to a talented artist or crafter. They could at least make something dignified and beautiful with them. :)
Don’t destroy them - set up a free account with FamilySearch.org and upload them to their website. That would allow other people and other relatives to enjoy them.
It depends on your family.
May I suggest creating a data base of scanned photographs. My wife volunteered to sort through the stuff at our church to create reference material for a book describing the 100 years of existence.
In the process she became adept at sorting and categorizing and scanning and photoshop cleaning up old photos and documents . She has all four of our parents families photos organized and available to view on screen.
The big file was stored on CD and given to brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and grand kids.
I have a box full of old photos from my mom. When she passed I let 2 aunts come take whatever they wanted. No one else is interested in them so I’ll probably wind up throwing the rest out.
Buy a scanner; scan them all; get one of those digital photo frames that rotates through the images when you turn it on. Put the whole collection on thumbdrives for other relatives, and ask them to pay a little towards the costs of the scanner and the thumbdrive; or just give it as their next birthday/holiday gift. We did this for a relative after her stroke and she loves the photo slideshow. She can't manage holding an album and leafing through the pages any more.