My father-in-law was a professional film editor. As you can imagine, his photos are excellent. He taught classes for many years, won contests, and gave travel talks at the libraries in the area.
My husband (also a semi-professional photographer) took all his film, slides and scans when he died, with the intent to sort it and find a home for things. Unfortunately, my husband passed away only a few years after his dad. I am left with an entire bedroom full of prints, slides, negatives and digitized media.
I’d like to do the right thing with it. My lovely FIL traveled the globe and shot images everywhere. However, I know that his pictures of Cambodia are probably like anyone else’s pictures.
Should I throw it all away? Are there stock photo houses that would like it? I’m not looking to make money (although I wouldn’t turn it down if offered). I’d just like to see his life’s work go somewhere. There is only one brother and he has no interest in any of it.
Advice?
I work with an archive that is building a photographic reference library making hundreds of thousands of images available for historic references and research etc. At a minimum it would fulfill a fully credited legacy of preservation for your photo collection. Feel free to reach out and we can speak a bit more in detail about what we’re up to. Thanks.
Oh… What archive is that? I would love to learn more myself!
I would definitely suggest to OP, before getting rid of them, digitize them for sure. Send them to an archive, archival device, or do your best with a camera or your phone. No matter what happens to the physical versions after that, you don’t have to feel (so) guilty about not hanging onto everything. I hang on to way too much stuff to be sure but it can be a huge mental burden if you let it be.