The Footnotes Of History: Images That Deserve More Attention

Clémence Scouten is a personal historian. She’s an expert when it comes to preserving family histories and legacies. As the founder of Memoirs And More, she has a wealth of experience in viewing, selecting, and organizing old photos and using them to tell a captivating story of how people once were—and are. Scouten is a firm believer in the power of photos.

“Photos are a great way to enter family history, like a window into history,” she told Bored Panda when we reached out to her. “We can see before we read. So even a small child can see pictures in an album or book and start to associate that with their family. Once that child gets older, they can read about the family and learn the details a photo can't convey.”

Photos are visual examples of our lives, and they tell the stories of our heritage, says Julie Kessler. She's the owner of a company called Picture This Organized. And spends endless hours helping families "organize their life treasures so they can share their life stories."

Scouten says that while it's important to preserve family history, not everyone wants to. And that's okay. "There's a lot of trauma some people want to leave behind, and we never want to force people to talk about that or be confronted with it," she explained.

Old family photographs can be particularly triggering. Looking at old photos reminds us of who we (and others) once were. “Someone might realize how very young they had been when they experienced a transformative event,” notes Psychology Today. “They might suddenly understand how vulnerable and innocent they had been.”

These reminders could trigger positive or negative emotions. They could change someone’s understanding of how their past played a part in who they are today. They could increase or decrease feelings of anger, guilt, or resentment. Photos—and the feelings associated with viewing them—could even prompt us to forgive. Or sometimes, fall in love all over again.

"There are many benefits to preserving our family history and knowing about other family members' successes and failures," Scouten told Bored Panda. "It helps us understand we are part of a structure (love it or hate it!) and that what we experience was probably experienced by someone relatively close to us. It is literally good for us."

Experts agree that looking at certain old photographs can be good for our mental health. According to Psychology Today, viewing images “associated with specific positive autobiographical memories increased positive mood and helped repair negative mood induced by a sad film clip.”

Scouten says we can get a lot of information from an old photo. "For people who enjoy research, photos give us many clues to when the photo was taken. Clothing fashions and background info (buildings, cars, etc.) can help place the photo in a timeframe and a place," revealed Scouten.

"The material the original photo was made out of tells us when it was printed (from metal plates in the 1800s to "calotypes" which are paper negatives to glass plates in the mid-1880s and so on)."

"Pay attention to details such as the photography studio, dates on the border, and information written on the back of the photo. These can help identify the person, timeline, and location," adds Kessler when we ask her what to look out for when viewing old photos.

Kessler warns that old photographs should always be handled with care. "These items are often fragile, and it's especially important to use gloves when reviewing them," she said.

When it comes to organizing your old photos, Kessler suggests filing them by family. "Physical prints won't have the same detailed information as digital photos will. So you don't know the day, year, or time unless someone has that information elsewhere. So we find it's easier to organize by the family vs date taken," she explained.

"Then, within the family, you can identify people and organize them chronologically. Most often, the volume of photos from older collections is significantly lower than that of digital ones. So, photos of your great grandfather as a child will likely be minimal."

Kessler says you should then store the content in an archive-safe box and use index cards or archive-safe folders to identify who is in that container or grouping.

Scouten says while she loves photographs, there are many other things that reveal how we were once upon a time. "My favorite is correspondence and diaries," she told Bored Panda. "People tell their stories, and the reader can learn not just what was going on but how the writer FELT about it."

She explains that while photos, especially formal portraits, capture how a person wants to look, correspondence or diaries often offer a much more intimate window into the subject's personality.

"In those old photos, no one smiles! But letters/diaries usually tell what's really going on as well as the mundane details of everyday life: chores, school, travel, work, and family, which you can't get from a photo."

Old photos can also help jog our memory. Sometimes, we don’t remember things exactly as they were. But, a photograph can correct the inaccurate details of how a person, animal, place, or object looked or even how an incident felt. If you've ever looked at a photograph and felt instantly transported back to that moment, you know exactly what we mean.

Scouten says working on your family history is bound to bring back many memories of people and times past, adding that this is something that should be embraced. She suggests taking the opportunity to reach out to a relative you haven't spoken to in a while to reminisce about a shared experience in your family history.

The expert says many of her clients are surprised by how differently they and someone else remember the same event. And how a conversation can trigger even more memories.

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