From the UK:

"Revealed: Extraordinary collection of 5,000 WWI photographs salvaged from RUBBISH DUMPS by a former dustman
-- Bob Smethurst spent years saving images of soldiers from landfill because he could not bear to see them destroyed
-- 'I found the majority of photographs in the 70s and 80s when those who fought were probably passing away'
-- As well as pictures he has also found letters, postcards and even bullets hidden in the rubbish"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2587919/Former-dustman-salvaged-5-000-historic-photographs-WWI-heroes-action-RUBBISH-DUMPS.html














It makes you wonder just how much history has been lost to the trash dumps over the years.

Every time I see old photos in a second-hand store, I wonder what we're losing.

Maybe there should be a "Ministry of Old Photographs"  where we could all donate photos of people with any info we have about them.  

It's bound to happen...generations pass and the next don't know who the people are.  There is no place to save them.

It is true that not everything can be saved, and not everything should be saved, and it is especially difficult to discern the historical value of items without the context of who, what, when, and where.

However, technology has made it so much easier to scan grandma and grandpa's old photos and post them on facebook, or send them to a local historical society, or even to commercial places such as ancestry.com

But those wartime pics have a great deal of value, even minus the whole context, to help prevent a wholesale dissociation from learning about our past.

I buy any historical photos I see that are cheap. Otherwise history is going down the drain.
I have a book from japan/Korea/and early Vietnam from an estate sale, the soldier got killed early on in the war as an advisor.
His name was Frank, and at least I can tell part of his story.
One of a hundred photos of his.

Exactly this.

But a context lends so much more.

It seems like if there was a good place to put it, a lot of people would.

I know there are folks who look at the old album and go "meh, I don't give a shit" and just toss it.

But most people I've seen really agonize about tossing out the old photos.

But if you take them home, you have to store them.  And if they're people you don't know, it becomes "one more responsibility" in the long list of stuff you have to deal with.  So....it gets tossed in deference to your kid's school records.  

So I think we need a "Way" to deal with them.

I must think on this.

It breaks my heart to see old photographs just tossed away as rubbish. In today's era of selfies and camera phones, pictures have little value, but the photographs of the past are something special. I also wish there were some place for these pictures to go. Perhaps some enterprising philanthropist will find a museum someday.