They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and on our Islands millions of words are disappearing. The photographic heritage of our land is being lost by leaps and bounds for two main reasons: first, due to the total and complete ignorance that many heirs have of the importance of the papers of grandparents and, second, due to the almost total impossibility of finding an institution that receives that legacy.
From Old Photos of Tenerife on Facebook we have tried to manage the delivery, both in deposit and donation, of important family photographic legacies and from important and prestigious photographers.
Many people contact us telling us that they have photos of their grandfather or great-grandfather who was a photographer or of the first people who had a camera in a small town, quite a feat until recently. They ask us for information on who to contact to donate them or if we can manage their delivery to an archive. They do it without asking for money for them, selflessly, without monetary acquisition cost for the archive and with only one condition, that online access to that legacy is facilitated.
This work has been totally unsuccessful in the negotiation with public institutions, alleging spurious reasons ranging from the fact that they do not have adequate conditions for their storage – as if a storage room had them – or that they have acquired a significant fund and have a job until retirement. A very important fund like that of the Pepe López family, which provided not only thousands of negatives, but also the photos already digitized in high quality on discs, was lucky to partially end up in the Tenerife Sports Clubbecause none of the institutions contacted had interest in it.
We have the most reliable proof of the manifest disinterest of the institutions in the photographic legacy of our Islands in the City Council of La Laguna, where they have digitized for two terms the wonderful Rueda Fund, with thousands of photos, thanks to the private initiative of one of the workers of that file, which remains unpublished, apparently having paid hosting and domain, pending the administrative order to put it online. Luckily, many of these photos have been published in our Old Photos of Tenerife group.
Many photos from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are in archives in Austria, Germany, France or the United States.
But this disinterest is not only on the part of the institutions. A few weeks ago, one of the group’s administrators was urgently requested to review some boxes that the new owners of a home were going to throw away. These boxes were left there by the sellers, who did not want to keep anything. They contained hundreds of unpublished photos, old postcards, and even Pathé Baby and 8-millimeter film tapes. All destined for the landfill.
A few years ago they found on a plot of land in La Orotava several boxes with hundreds of centuries-old documents that had been discarded from a nearby construction site.
Right now we have pending an institutional agreement on the largest collection of old photos of the Islands. It has more than 45,000 photos on paper, negatives and glass. All this is accompanied by more than 600 rare books about Canary Islands, old maps, posters and other objects from the Tenerife collector, who lives in London, Manuel Jesús Martín Martínez. He is a pro Toscalero who is interested in his entire fund remaining in the Canary Islands, but who does not quite agree with the relevant institutions.
But not everything is negative, from the group Old Photos of Tenerife we have managed to generate an archive of more than 120,000 photos, especially from Tenerife. Most of them are perfectly documented.
Many incorrect dating and descriptions that had persisted over the years have been corrected and we have created a catalog of street furniture and buildings that in many cases allows us to date photos with a precision ranging from a range of five years to just a few hours.
And not all institutions are so careless with their assets. We have to highlight the wonderful work of Fedac of the Cabildo of Gran Canaria with its hundreds of thousands of photos completely available online in excellent quality. We must also talk about Digital Memory Lanzaroteof the Lanzarote Town Council, with a wonderful photographic repository with very good digitization. We must add the no less important Photographic Archive of the La Palma Town Councilwith photos not only unpublished and unique, but also perfectly documented.
Although there are other very important photographic funds, many of them in Tenerife such as the Photography Center Tenerife Island (CFIT), the Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country of Tenerife, the Provincial Historical Archive, Cedocam or the AIHM, these lack online access to photos. Those who have this option suffer from poor quality, often making it impossible to use them for research. Even, in some cases, forgetting that since they are public archives they are mere custodians of something that belongs to everyone and acting as private collectors hoarding treasures.
Some of our administrators and collaborators are doing the immense work of not only acquiring, with their effort and money, rare or unpublished photos, photo boxes and albums in internet auctions. Sometimes the prices are exorbitant and they are also having the immense kindness of selflessly sharing digital copies of those photos in Facebook groups on the internet. They demonstrate an enormous love for history, culture and its dissemination. We will never be grateful enough.
Others have gained access to funds that were previously banned thanks to the good work and seriousness they demonstrate as researchers. They have achieved wonders such as cataloging and publishing a book about the Murga Fund, a wonderful set of stereoscopic photos from the 1910s.
It is curious to see how many photos from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are found in archives in Austria, Germany, France, the United States, New Zealand and a number of other countries that we would never think of.
The lack of interest of the institutions in Tenerife is so great that we as administrators of the group, together with collectors and history lovers, have thought about creating a cultural association with the aim of collecting, preserving and above all disseminating all those funds that otherwise way they are destined to be forgotten in the trash.
