What to do with old photos and papers comes down to an order. Before anything is thrown away, ask the oldest relatives to name the people in them. Then sort by family branch, write names in soft pencil on the backs, store the originals flat in acid-free boxes in a cool, dry room, and give the family copies while one person keeps the originals.
Most families face the question of what to do with old photos after a death, when a parent's home has to be cleared and a box of photographs and papers turns up at the back of a closet. Nothing in the box is urgent except the names. The people who can say who is in a photograph will not always be there to ask, so the naming comes first, and the rest can wait a few weeks.
Key points
- Throw nothing away until it has been looked at, since envelopes and the backs of photographs often name a town or a date.
- Ask the oldest relatives to name the people first, and write down who said what.
- Label in soft pencil on the back near the edge, or on the envelope, and never in ink.
- Store originals in acid-free boxes at 70°F or below and 30 to 50 percent relative humidity, out of basements and attics.
- Copy prints and documents at 300 dots per inch, or 600 for a small print you may enlarge, and keep the originals.
Seven steps, in order
- Keep everything together, and throw nothing away until it has been looked at.
- Ask the oldest relatives to name the people, and write down who said what.
- Sort by family branch, then by decade, and give each item a number.
- Label each photograph on the back, in soft pencil, near the edge.
- Store the originals flat or upright in acid-free boxes, in a cool, dry room.
- Copy the ones that matter, front and back, and give each brother and sister a set.
- Pull out the papers that lead to records, with a note of what each one is.
When a parent's home is cleared
Wait before sorting anything out. Papers that look like clutter are often the ones that lead somewhere, such as an envelope with a foreign postmark or a receipt from a burial society that names a town. Keep loose papers with whatever they were found beside. If brothers and sisters are dividing a home, agree first that the photographs and papers stay together as one collection, with one person, until they have been read.
In Jewish homes, worn seforim, tefillin, mezuzos and papers with sacred text go to sheimos to be buried, and are never put out with the trash; ask your rav what counts. Before seforim go anywhere, look inside the covers. A grandfather often wrote his name there, sometimes with his town and a date.
How to identify people in old family photos
Sit with the oldest relatives and go through the photographs a few at a time, in sessions of an hour or less. Record the conversation, and write down on a separate sheet what each person said and who said it, because later the source of a name matters as much as the name. Ask where the picture was taken and why. Even a partial answer, such as an aunt from Brooklyn, is worth writing down.
Then ask the cousins. Families often printed several copies of a portrait and sent them to relatives in other towns and countries, so a cousin on another branch may hold the same picture with the names written on the back. Compare the faces in unnamed photographs with those in named ones, and many of the unnamed people can be placed.
Reading the back of a photograph
A studio's stamp gives its name and town, and sometimes a street, which places the family in that town at that time. Photographs sent from Europe often carry a dedication in Yiddish, German or Polish, with the sender's name, a date and often the town. Copy the inscription exactly, and have it read by someone who knows the language and the handwriting of the period.
How to date old photos by format and clothing
The kind of photograph gives a range of years, and the mount and the clothes narrow it. The table gives the usual years for each kind.
| Kind | Usual years | How to recognize it |
|---|---|---|
| Daguerreotype | 1839 to about 1865, most in the 1850s | A mirror-like image on silvered metal, usually in a small hinged case |
| Ambrotype | About 1854 to 1865 | An image on glass with a dark backing, usually in a case |
| Tintype | 1856 to about 1930, most in the 1860s | An image on a thin iron plate; a magnet will hold to it, and not to an ambrotype's glass |
| Carte de visite | About 1860 to 1900 | A small portrait on a card roughly two and a half by four inches |
| Cabinet card | 1866 to the early 1900s | A larger print on a card about four and a quarter by six and a half inches, often with the studio's name below |
| Photo postcard | From about 1900 | A photograph printed on a postcard; from 1907 the back is divided for an address and a message |
Years from the University of Washington Libraries' dating guide; the magnet test from the Ohio History Connection; card sizes from the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus. Checked October 2026. Studios in small towns kept older kinds in use for years.
Clothing and hairstyles give a decade at best, so compare an undated photograph with dated ones from the same family and place, and remember that fashions reached small towns late. The people in a photograph date it too: if a child known to be born in 1921 looks about five, the picture is from about 1926.
How to organize old family photos
Sort first by family branch, the father's side and the mother's side, and then by decade within each branch. Give every photograph and paper a number, written lightly in pencil on the back, and keep a list on paper with the number, who is in it, where and when it was taken, and who identified them. The list matters more than any arrangement. Before putting a framed photograph back on the wall, look at the back of the frame and of the print.
What to do with old photo albums
Keep an album whole if it came as one. The order of its pages and the captions under the pictures are information, and an album taken apart loses them. Copy every page as it stands before anything is moved.
Albums with sticky pages under a clear plastic cover, often called magnetic albums, are the exception. The Library of Congress and the National Archives both advise against them, because of the adhesive. If the prints lift away easily, move them in the same order to an album with photo corners or sleeves. If they are held fast, do not pry them off; copy the pages and ask a conservator.
How to label photos without harming them
When a photograph has to be marked, the Library of Congress advises writing on the back, near the edge, with a soft graphite pencil, and never over the image. Use no ink, tape or sticky notes. For a fragile print, or one with a glossy back that will not take pencil, write the label on the envelope or folder that holds it instead, which the Library prefers in any case.
How to preserve old photos and papers
Damp and heat do the most harm. The Library of Congress advises keeping photographs at 70°F or below and at a relative humidity between 30 and 50 percent. The National Archives advises keeping family papers below 75°F and below 65 percent relative humidity, and out of damp basements, garages and hot attics. In practice that means a closet or a shelf in the lived-in part of the house, away from outside walls, pipes and radiators.
| Use | Avoid |
|---|---|
| Boxes and folders that are acid-free and lignin-free, and for photographs, ones that have passed the Photographic Activity Test | Ordinary cardboard boxes and envelopes |
| Sleeves of uncoated polyester, polyethylene or polypropylene | PVC and any plastic you cannot identify |
| Prints lying flat, or upright in a box that holds them without bending | Overstuffed boxes |
| Photo corners or sleeves on album pages | Magnetic albums |
| Clean, dry hands, or clean nitrile gloves for negatives and cased photographs | Rubber bands, paper clips, staples, tape and glue |
From the Library of Congress on the care of photographs and the National Archives on storing family papers, checked October 2026.
Nitrate negatives, made from 1888 to 1951, give off harmful gases as they age and catch fire easily, so keep any negatives from those years apart from the prints and ask a conservator about them. Film with the word Safety along its edge is not nitrate. Color photographs and negatives fade in warm rooms, and the Library of Congress recommends cold storage, at 40°F or below, for those the family most wants to keep.
How to scan old photos and papers
Copies let the family share the photographs without handling the originals. Whether the family makes them or pays someone to, the work goes in this order:
- Take off paper clips, staples and loose tape, and leave any cleaning of the image itself to a conservator.
- Number each item and add it to your list.
- Copy the front of each item, and the back of any with writing or a studio's stamp, and keep the two images together.
- Choose the resolution from the table below.
- Name each file with its number, the family name and the year, such as 0042-goldberg-1931-back. The National Archives advises plain letters and numbers, with no spaces.
- Record who is in each picture, and where and when it was taken, with the file.
- Keep three copies of the files, on two kinds of storage, with one outside the house, which the National Archives calls the 3-2-1 rule, and move them to new storage every five to seven years.
| What is being copied | Resolution |
|---|---|
| Documents, letters and ordinary prints up to five by seven inches | 300 |
| Prints to be enlarged to eight by ten inches or more, and small prints with several faces | 400 to 600 |
| Slides | About 1,900 |
From the Library of Congress sheet Scanning your personal collections, checked October 2026.
If prints are sent out to be copied, list them first and send them in batches, keeping the irreplaceable ones at home until the first batch comes back complete. Ask that fragile or bent papers be copied lying flat, one at a time.
What to do with old photos after scanning
Keep the originals. The National Archives warns that copies have their own risks and are easily lost, and a copy cannot show the paper or the writing on the back as the original does. Put the originals back in numbered order, with the list, and let one person hold them. The copies are for everyone, as a set for each household or as a family history photo book that puts the pictures in order with their stories.
Letters and papers in Yiddish, German or Polish
A letter in a language no one in the family reads is easy to set aside, and it is often the most useful paper in the box. Keep each letter in its envelope, since the postmark gives the town and the date. Yiddish letters are written in Hebrew letters, often quickly and with spellings of their own, and German letters from before the 1940s are often in Kurrent, an older script few people read today. One line about a wedding can place a family in a town in a given year, so have the whole letter translated. Old Yiddish and Hebrew letters explains how to date a letter, find a translator and what a full translation should give.
The papers to keep, and where they lead
Some papers lead to records that cannot be found any other way. Keep these, even when they look worn or dull, each with a note of where it was found. How to trace your ancestry lists the papers a researcher asks for first and shows where each one leads.
| Paper | What it can give | Where it leads |
|---|---|---|
| Naturalization certificate | The court and the date, sometimes a former name | The naturalization file |
| Passport, ship ticket or alien registration card | Dates and ports | The passenger list |
| Letters with envelopes, old address books | The town and relatives abroad | The town's registers, and cousins |
| Ketubah or marriage certificate | The date and place of the wedding, the fathers' names | The town's marriage register |
| Seforim with names inside, yahrzeit lists | Hebrew names with fathers' names, dates of death | Gravestones and burial records |
| Cemetery deeds, burial society papers | Often a landsmanshaft, a society of people from one town | The family's town |
| School reports, army discharge and work papers | Addresses and dates | Census and city records |
| Photographs of a street, a shop or a synagogue | A place as it once stood | The town's museum or archive |
When a damaged photograph needs a conservator
Some damage should not be handled at home: photographs stuck together or to the glass of a frame, mold, flaking prints, and rolled papers that crack when opened. Do not pull them apart or tape them. The National Archives advises calling a conservator when a problem cannot be solved safely with good storage and handling, and acting quickly when items are wet or have insects in them. A conservator is a trained specialist who treats the original object. The American Institute for Conservation keeps a directory of conservators, searchable by specialty and place; look for one who works on photographs or on paper.
Photo restoration: where to get old photos restored
A photo restorer works on a copy, filling in cracks, stains and faded areas, and makes a new print from it, while the original stays as it was. Ask to see prints of the same age the restorer has worked on, and ask for the unretouched copy as well as the retouched one, so the family keeps both.
Sharing among brothers and sisters
When a parent's photographs are divided, letters can end up in one house and their envelopes in another, or an album is cut up so that each child has a page. Copies solve most of this. Give each brother and sister a full set, keep the originals together with one person, and write down for the whole family where they are.
What to do with old family photos no one wants
Offer them to cousins first, since a picture that means nothing to one branch may be the only photograph another has of a grandparent. Photographs of a town can go to a local historical society, or to a museum or archive in the town itself. YIVO collects the letters, papers and photographs of ordinary Jewish families from Eastern Europe and their descendants, and the Leo Baeck Institute collects those of German-speaking Jewish families. Ask before sending anything, since each takes only what fits its collection.
What the photos and papers can lead to
The names written on the backs of photographs and the towns on old envelopes are what the archives need, and a commissioned book starts from them. Zichronos reads and translates originals like these and finds the records they point to, with the archive, copy and translation fees part of the commission. The family's history is built from those records, with each photograph placed where it belongs in the story.
Family history book examples shows what a finished book holds, and Inside a book shows its pages. What a family history book costs sets out what each kind of service includes, and How we work sets out the steps. More guides are in family stories and keepsakes.
Sources: the Library of Congress on the care of photographs and of film, and on scanning personal collections; the US National Archives on storing, digitizing and repairing family papers and photographs; the University of Washington Libraries on dating photographs; YIVO and the Leo Baeck Institute on what they collect. Checked October 2026.
Questions families ask
What should I do with my parents' old photos?
Keep them together and throw nothing away until it has been looked at. Ask the oldest relatives to name the people, and write down who said what. Then sort them by family branch, label the backs in soft pencil, store the originals in acid-free boxes in a cool, dry room, and give each brother and sister a set of copies.
What is the best way to preserve old photos?
Keep them cool and dry, at 70°F or below and a relative humidity between 30 and 50 percent, as the Library of Congress advises, and out of basements and attics. Store them flat or upright in acid-free, lignin-free boxes, in sleeves of polyester or polypropylene, never PVC. Remove rubber bands and clips, and avoid magnetic albums.
What resolution should I scan old photos at?
The Library of Congress suggests 300 dots per inch for documents and ordinary prints, 400 to 600 for prints you may want to enlarge, and about 1,900 for slides. Small old prints with several faces are worth copying at 600. Copy the back of any print with writing on it, and name each file with its number from your list.
How do I identify people in old family photos?
Ask the oldest relatives, a few photographs at a time, and record what they say and who said it. Read the back for names, a dedication and a studio's stamp. Ask cousins on other branches, who may have copies with names written on them, and compare unknown faces with photographs that are already named.
Are old family photos worth anything?
To the family and to historians, often a great deal; to collectors, usually little. Photographs of a town or a synagogue, especially in Europe before the war, can matter to the museums and archives that document that place. Offer them to cousins first, then to an archive that collects such pictures.
Should I keep old letters after a parent dies?
Yes, with their envelopes, until someone has read them. Letters in Yiddish, German or Polish are often the papers that name the family's town and the dates of weddings and deaths. The postmark and return address are information too. Have them translated in full before deciding what to keep.