{"id":129925,"date":"2019-08-12T10:13:16","date_gmt":"2019-08-12T09:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amateurphotographer.co.uk\/?p=129925"},"modified":"2022-09-06T18:31:29","modified_gmt":"2022-09-06T17:31:29","slug":"ailsa-mcwhinnie-take-care-photo-archive-late","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/other.kelsey.host\/amateurphotographer\/latest\/photo-news\/ailsa-mcwhinnie-take-care-photo-archive-late\/","title":{"rendered":"Take care of your photo archive \u2013 before it’s too late"},"content":{"rendered":"

Of all the things I expected to wake up to on 1 January this year, it wasn\u2019t the news that my late grandparents\u2019 possessions had gone up in smoke. At around 7.45pm the night before, a fire broke out at the Shurgard storage facility in Purley Way, south London. By the early hours of New Year\u2019s Day, the entire building \u2013 which housed 1,198 rented units \u2013 had been razed to the ground. Nothing was salvaged. We were luckier than many. Some lost every last belonging; others their livelihoods.<\/p>\n

My grandfather died in 1995, and my grandmother (or, to be more accurate, my step-grandmother) continued living in their flat until 2016, when dementia meant she had to move into a nursing home. Not long after this, we sold the property, and my sister and I were tasked with sorting through two lifetimes\u2019 worth of belongings. However, despite a long and respected career in politics, my grandmother had surprisingly few mementos of it. My grandfather had been a wonderful artist. Fortunately, over the years, a number of his paintings had been distributed around our small family. But it\u2019s the two self-portraits, which were in the storage unit, that I will miss the most.<\/p>\n

Sort out your photos for posterity<\/strong><\/h3>\n

While my sister and I found ourselves capable of being reasonably dispassionate about what would go into the Shurgard unit and what would go to house clearance once we\u2019d packed up the flat, it was the photographs that proved paralysing. Early on in the first day, I set aside a small bundle of black & white prints, which I took home to scan. These formed only a tiny portion of what was to come. Shortly after, we uncovered boxes and boxes and boxes of prints that we simply didn\u2019t know what to do with. Not to mention the hundreds of small, rectangular plastic containers that housed thousands of 35mm colour slides. We opened one or two of them, but no more. Overwhelmed by this point, we added it all to the pile of items for the removal men to take to the storage unit. We\u2019d deal with them \u2018one day\u2019.<\/p>\n\t\t

\n\t\t\t\"Viewpoint\t\t\t

Ailsa\u2019s grandfather (centre) in an unnamed (and surreal) play from the 1930s. One of only a few photos that didn\u2019t go into storage. Credit: Ailsa McWhinnie<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n

While my sister and I found ourselves capable of being reasonably dispassionate about what would go into the Shurgard unit and what would go to house clearance once we\u2019d packed up the flat, it was the photographs that proved paralysing. Early on in the first day, I set aside a small bundle of black & white prints, which I took home to scan. These formed only a tiny portion of what was to come. Shortly after, we uncovered boxes and boxes and boxes of prints that we simply didn\u2019t know what to do with. Not to mention the hundreds of small, rectangular plastic containers that housed thousands of 35mm colour slides. We opened one or two of them, but no more. Overwhelmed by this point, we added it all to the pile of items for the removal men to take to the storage unit. We\u2019d deal with them \u2018one day\u2019.<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t our job to deal with them. It should have been up to my grandparents. Why hadn\u2019t they sorted through the prints and slides, kept a handful that were meaningful, put them in an album and ditched the rest? I was left asking myself how much these pictures had actually meant to them. And if they didn\u2019t mean anything to them, why should they mean anything to us? It may sound brutal, but living \u2013 as my sister, mother and I all do \u2013 in small flats, we aren\u2019t in a position to keep stuff simply because the people those things belonged to are now gone.<\/p>\n

So my message is this. If you have decades\u2019 worth of disorganised photographs, go through them. Keep perhaps 1%, and chuck the rest. Because, should the unthinkable happen, and your offspring end up losing almost every one of those unsorted, unloved prints in deeply unpleasant circumstances, you might find their reaction is not one of grief, but relief.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/h3>\n

Ailsa McWhinnie has worked in photography magazines for more than 25 years. She is Amateur Photographer<\/em>\u2019s co-features editor.<\/h3>\n
\n

The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of Amateur Photographer magazine or TI Media Limited<\/em><\/p>\n

Further reading:<\/strong>
\nRead our guide to file and photo management<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We need to take responsibility for our photographs while we can, to avoid those left behind having to do all the work<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":129915,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[311,39,466],"tags":[2201,2167,1799],"product-category":[],"class_list":["post-129925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-photo-news","category-opinion","tag-archive","tag-fire","tag-photos"],"yoast_head":"\nTake care of your photo archive \u2013 before it's too late - Amateur Photographer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We need to take responsibility for our photographs while we can, to avoid those left behind having to do all the work\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/other.kelsey.host\/amateurphotographer\/latest\/photo-news\/ailsa-mcwhinnie-take-care-photo-archive-late\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Take care of your photo archive \u2013 before it's too late\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We need to take responsibility for our photographs while we can, to avoid those left behind having to do all the work\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/other.kelsey.host\/amateurphotographer\/latest\/photo-news\/ailsa-mcwhinnie-take-care-photo-archive-late\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Amateur Photographer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Amateur.photographer.magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-08-12T09:13:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-09-06T17:31:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/other.kelsey.host\/amateurphotographer\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/16\/2019\/08\/Viewpoint-old-photos.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"630\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"420\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@AP_Magazine\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@AP_Magazine\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/other.kelsey.host\/amateurphotographer\/latest\/photo-news\/ailsa-mcwhinnie-take-care-photo-archive-late\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/other.kelsey.host\/amateurphotographer\/latest\/photo-news\/ailsa-mcwhinnie-take-care-photo-archive-late\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"\",\"@id\":\"\"},\"headline\":\"Take care of your photo archive \u2013 before it’s too late\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-08-12T09:13:16+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-09-06T17:31:29+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/other.kelsey.host\/amateurphotographer\/latest\/photo-news\/ailsa-mcwhinnie-take-care-photo-archive-late\/\"},\"wordCount\":770,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/other.kelsey.host\/amateurphotographer\/latest\/photo-news\/ailsa-mcwhinnie-take-care-photo-archive-late\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/other.kelsey.host\/amateurphotographer\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/16\/2019\/08\/Viewpoint-old-photos.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"archive\",\"fire\",\"Photos\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Latest articles\",\"Latest news\",\"Opinion\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/other.kelsey.host\/amateurphotographer\/latest\/photo-news\/ailsa-mcwhinnie-take-care-photo-archive-late\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/other.kelsey.host\/amateurphotographer\/latest\/photo-news\/ailsa-mcwhinnie-take-care-photo-archive-late\/\",\"name\":\"Take care of your photo archive \u2013 before it's too late - 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