Your Family Has Thousands of Photos You’ve Never Seen
America’s Photo Night is a new holiday tradition from ScanMyPhotos. This December, we’re inviting families nationwide to rediscover the pictures they’ve been saving for years.
Your Parents Had a Life Before You
Your parents were young once. They had best friends you’ve never met. They took trips you’ve never heard about. They lived in apartments you wouldn’t recognize. Somewhere in your family’s collection, there’s probably a photograph of your mother at 22 that would surprise you. I’d love to see that picture.
This holiday season, ScanMyPhotos is launching America’s Photo Night, and we’d love for families across the country to spend an evening looking through their old photographs together. Think about the thousands of pictures your family has collected—how many have you actually seen? I’m especially curious about the ones that haven’t been looked at since someone picked them up from the photo lab. Pictures from ordinary afternoons, old friendships, first jobs, and forgotten vacations—those are the ones I’d start with.
Wait. Who’s That Standing Next to Dad?
There’s a particular kind of fun in finding a photograph nobody can explain. Your father is standing beside someone you’ve never seen. Your grandmother is posing in front of a house nobody remembers. Your parents are dressed for a party that apparently nobody wants to discuss. Now you’ve got questions.
The funny thing about old photographs is how much more interesting they become with age. Nobody thought twice about the furniture in the background when the picture was taken. Forty years later, everybody wants to know what happened to that orange couch. Somebody usually remembers. That’s when the conversation gets good.
Forget Organizing Everything First
Please don’t turn America’s Photo Night into another project that takes six months to finish. Pull out your old albums. Open a box of prints. Put your digitized pictures on the television. Start looking. If you’ve got thousands of photographs, wonderful. Nobody expects you to finish them all.
You might spend half an hour talking about one picture. Someone will remember the year incorrectly. Someone else will insist the vacation was in Florida when it was actually Arizona. Let them argue about it. That’s probably more entertaining than whatever’s on television. One suggestion: ask permission to record a few conversations. Years from now, you might want to hear exactly how Grandma explained that 1968 photograph.
Your Cousin in Chicago Might Know
Families don’t always have the same photographs. Your aunt might have wedding photos that nobody else has seen. Your cousin could have an entirely different collection from the same childhood vacations. Invite relatives who live far away to join over a video call. Share pictures on screen. Ask them to bring out their own. Friends can participate too. So can old classmates who haven’t seen each other in decades.
We’re also inviting everyone to share a favorite discovery on social media using #AmericasPhotoNight. Choose a photograph with an interesting story. Tell us who’s in it. Include the year if you know it. Please get permission before posting pictures of other people. Some family stories are best enjoyed privately.
This December, Let’s Actually Look at Them
At ScanMyPhotos, we’ve helped families preserve photographs since 1990. I’ve spent much of my career thinking about what happens to pictures after they’re taken. We save them because we expect to want them someday. Then someday arrives, and we can’t remember the last time we opened the album. That’s what I’d like America’s Photo Night to change.
There’s nothing to sign up for, and no special equipment is needed. You don’t have to digitize a single photograph to take part. Simply choose an evening during the holiday season and invite the people who might remember what’s happening in the pictures. Give everyone a chance to look through them and share their memories. What if this idea caught on across the country? Families could host their own evenings, and college students home for winter break might discover what their parents were like at their age. Retirement communities could gather around photographs residents haven’t seen in years. Maybe someone will finally identify that mystery person in a wedding picture—or you’ll find a photograph you didn’t even know existed.
Either way, I’d start with the pictures your parents took before you were born. Those might require the most explaining.
A new holiday tradition from ScanMyPhotos.
Share your favorite discovery using #AmericasPhotoNight.
Edited October 18, 2016
