Are eBay sellers destroying our photographic heritage?
I'm seeing it more and more often lately, and it worries me greatly. People are buying up old photo albums then cutting them up and selling the pages or photographs separately on eBay.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the sale of old photographs. I firmly believe that if someone is prepared to bid enough to secure an interesting old photo then they more than likely will have enough interest to look after it. I've even picked up a few excellent old photos on eBay myself. What I strongly object to is the butchering of Victorian or Edwardian photo albums for profit.
You can spot the offending sellers quite easily. The description of their lot will include something along the lines of "there is another photo mounted on the reverse side". The number of empty victorian photo albums offered for sale is another indicator of this highly questionable practice.
I suppose the main difficulty I have with the practice is that an old photo by itself has little meaning. It may be asthetically beautiful, or interesting from a 'fashions of the times' point of view - but so much more can be gained from viewing a photograph in context, and for album collections the album is the context. Seeing an old photo alongside others that were taken around the same time, maybe with notes or captions under each image, gives the viewer a far richer insight into the period that a photo by itself. I'm talking here about antique photo albums that range from 100 to about 145 years old! You can't easily recover the information that may be lost when one of these is uncerimoniously chopped up and scattered among the highest bidders...
Having had my grumble, you should still definately check out eBay>Collectibles>Photographic Images>Antique (Pre 1940) listings as there are some very interesting items to be had (that haven't been cut from an album). And it can be fun to restore something other than a mugshot from your own family tree every once in a while! Just be wary of what you bid for, many sellers are getting money for old rope and charging steep prices for junk. If you are looking to buy a photo to restore then you can look for ones that are maybe not in such good condition and get them for a reasonable price.
Let me know what you think about this, I'd be interested to hear the opinion of others.
-Mark.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the sale of old photographs. I firmly believe that if someone is prepared to bid enough to secure an interesting old photo then they more than likely will have enough interest to look after it. I've even picked up a few excellent old photos on eBay myself. What I strongly object to is the butchering of Victorian or Edwardian photo albums for profit.
You can spot the offending sellers quite easily. The description of their lot will include something along the lines of "there is another photo mounted on the reverse side". The number of empty victorian photo albums offered for sale is another indicator of this highly questionable practice.
I suppose the main difficulty I have with the practice is that an old photo by itself has little meaning. It may be asthetically beautiful, or interesting from a 'fashions of the times' point of view - but so much more can be gained from viewing a photograph in context, and for album collections the album is the context. Seeing an old photo alongside others that were taken around the same time, maybe with notes or captions under each image, gives the viewer a far richer insight into the period that a photo by itself. I'm talking here about antique photo albums that range from 100 to about 145 years old! You can't easily recover the information that may be lost when one of these is uncerimoniously chopped up and scattered among the highest bidders...
Having had my grumble, you should still definately check out eBay>Collectibles>Photographic Images>Antique (Pre 1940) listings as there are some very interesting items to be had (that haven't been cut from an album). And it can be fun to restore something other than a mugshot from your own family tree every once in a while! Just be wary of what you bid for, many sellers are getting money for old rope and charging steep prices for junk. If you are looking to buy a photo to restore then you can look for ones that are maybe not in such good condition and get them for a reasonable price.
Let me know what you think about this, I'd be interested to hear the opinion of others.
-Mark.
posted by Mark Wilson | 4:00 PM
2 Comments:
Your point about culling albums was well-noted - I'd never run across this before so am glad to learn of it as something to be aware of.
On a related note re; destruction of old photos: I've wondered lately about the huge number of collage artists I've seen who use antique photos. I hope they're using photocopies & not the originals. For me, the individual photos are as valuable as the albums you wrote about & I wince to see so many literally cut & pasted. I don't think many of those folks are doing digital collage work, so it's a concern to me, but I haven't yet seen this point addressed in any of their blogs.
That's a valid point Neasa, and I too would hope that copies are being used.
I guess I've always seen art as a process of creation, not of destruction. But all people are different - one will see a butterfly and take a beautiful photograph of it or paint a picture inspired by it, another will see the same butterfly, stick a pin through it and mount it in a box.
Both are left with something nice to look at, but one has created something and the other has destroyed something.
I guess it's obvious which side of the fence I'm on!
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