The Fascination of Forsaken Photos

For those of you who follow T.W. Paterson History Author on Facebook you’ll recognize the next few paragraphs as a recent post that gained numerous thoughtful comments. Today, I’m going to expand upon this theme with the stories behind several some of the photos I’ve ‘rescued’ over the years at garage sales and flea markets. Once, from a dumpster!

You see them from time to time at garage sales, flea markets, even antique sales: old family photos, some of them still mounted in their original albums.

Some have been removed to sell individually and are now separated from their captions so there’s no way of telling who, when or where.

Once they were someone’s prized family treasure; now they’re just a sales item without meaning or value other than as objects of mild curiosity.

I’ve rescued many (even war medals) over the years, sometimes buying them from a family member who just doesn’t give a damn about aunts and uncles, grandparents or—Give them a couple of bucks and it’s a deal.

If I sound cynical, so be it. It always bothers me to see photos that once had great meaning to someone treated so cavalierly, hence my sometimes buying them just to give them a home, even if it’s that of a stranger. At least, I can sometimes use them to illustrate my writings—like today’s Chronicle.

And, it can be fun to study the faces and wonder who they were, what happened to them.

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