Custodian

I have a collection of images -- photographs, videos, and documents. Some of the images would likely be of interest only to me: photos taken through the window of a moving car in a western desert on a summer afternoon over 30 years ago, mostly a blur -- just like my memory: I can't tell you now why I took that photo or what I may have found interesting then, but seeing that motion-blurred image captured through a dirty window connects me with the collection of memories from those long vacation trips.

Other images include photos of people, most of them people we know and care about. Few of these are especially good photos, but again they are links to memories and thus they still have value. Are these images mine? Yes, certainly they are in a technical, legal sense: I am the artist who recorded the likeness onto media that I own. Yet, the images contain recognizable likenesses of persons who each are entitled to two related rights: the right to privacy, and the right of publicity. Those persons therefore have an interest, at least potentially, in what I do with those images.

Among this collection, also, are documents ranging from birth and death certificates and title and registration for properties and vehicles, to purchase receipts from a visit to the convenience store. Some are obviously important and others were intended to have only transient value (yet even they are sometimes linked to precious memories). Most of these are documents pertaining to my life, but not all: birth certificates, military discharge papers, grade school report cards for siblings, ancestors, descendants, and even some unrelated friends, have accumulated here. While I may find them interesting it is somehow less appropriate to call these "mine".

So it seems that I have become a custodian. Admittedly, in most of these cases they do not know and may well not care about their potential interest in my collection of images and documents. Do I have a duty to carefully catalog and preserve for their benefit these items that I've accumulated? Perhaps the best approach is to look at the issue from their perspective: some of them may well have similar collections of thousands of documents and images, a few of which I might indeed be interested in seeing or obtaining copies of. Do I expect them them to carefully catalog their collection and review it for any items that I might potentially have an interest in? Would I expect them to make copies and send them to me whether I had expressed any interest or not? Would I be comfortable contacting them and asking them to spend hours sifting through their personal stuff to see if they had anything I might be interested in? Almost certainly not!

Some of this collection is material that I've inherited from others in an unsorted, uncatalogued condition, and I may be the last living person who can identify and catalog the items and the people they are associated with. If I do not record that knowledge, the value of those artifacts is greatly diminished for all other people. Should I let them die along with me? Do I imagine that anyone after me will care at all whether I do or I don't? Not likely.

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📅 c: 2018-09-17 09:33 ✏️ e: 2025-01-04 12:58

🏷 tags: #photos #documents #catalog #preservation #duty