Advice on Photo Storage from The Smithsonian Institution Archives

How to Store Photographs

Following a professional’s advice about photo storage will provide the best way to preserve your picture memories. In this video from The Smithsonian Institution Archives, Anna, a post-graduate conservation fellow at The Smithsonian, offers tips on storing your photos in the same manner it’s done at the nation’s premier museum.

She shows us in a video that can be seen on The Mission page of this site how to remove photos that over time have adhered to pages of an old photo album. But below she talks about how the photos should be stored once they’ve been removed.

Notice that Anna mentions the Photograph Activity Test, or the PAT, that is used at The Smithsonian Institution Archive for certainty that the storage methods such as envelopes, covers, sleeves, boxes, etc. will not affect the physical composition of the photo. On each envelope important information about the photo and its subject matter are recorded. Whether noted lightly on the back of the photo or on the storage sleeve, she advises that all photographs to be preserved should have this type of information accompanying it for future reference. It will make scrapbooking easier when you begin assembling the memories.

She shows us different types of sleeves that are acceptable for storage and discusses various advantages to using each. Additionally she talks about boxes, the types and sizes available from archival supply sources and how to store photographs for safekeeping, cataloging and filing.