Will heat damage photos?

[taffy]

Pretty sure the answer will be yes but I’m at a loss. I have all of my mom’s photos. She kept all of her mom’s photos, ergo, I have a shit ton of photographs. Many of people I don’t know but know I’m related to. I’ve pretty much just put them in a box. If I put them in our attic, the Texas heat will kill them won’t it? My aunt is coming for thanksgiving and I’m going to make her go through the old old ones, of my great great whom ever. If she doesn’t want them it’s ok to toss right? Maybe scan first if she can tell me who the hell they are.

I have told my kid it is absolutely ok to toss anything of mine after I go. Maybe keep a really good picture of me but everything else can go. My mom kept her granddaddy’s drivers license FFS. He died in 1968.

[Jalapeñomel]

Yes heat is not good for photos.

[ohgillian]

Heat is terrible for photos.

[imojoebunny]

Sorry, no attic. I would go through with your aunt, label the ones you want to keep with stickers on the back with the names, and possible dates, if you know them, and offer the rest to other relatives.
If no takers, toss them. I love pictures, but they are for my memories, not memories of people I never even knew.

[penguingrrl]

Definitely no attic. If you have ones you truly want to preserve, make sure to put in acid-free archival paper to protect it. Or toss, if it’s people you don’t know. Or keep for future historians (I love looking through the photos in our archive at work even though most are of unlabeled people we suspect aren’t even related to our site).

[lilypad1126]

Yes, heat is bad for photos.

My grandma kept ALL the photos and then gave most of them to my mom last year before she died. Earlier this year, mom and I went through a bunch of them. We threw out SO MANY! All the bad photos, all the ones where we didn’t know who was in the photos, we were ruthless. We still have too many but we’re down by half. Anyway, it was fun to see the old hairstyles and clothes, but I feel no need to keep them all. There is nothing wrong with tossing photos that don’t mean anything to you.