Photo album
You have a photo album. Photo albums have been around since the 19th century, appearing on the market in many different shapes and sizes, and for different purposes, over the years.
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‘Insert albums’ were produced for cartes de visite at the start of the 1860s, and a bit later also for slightly larger cabinet cards. Self-adhesive photo albums, in which you could stick pictures not mounted on cardboard, were also available back then. The pages were either sewn, glued or tied together with a cord.
Postcard albums were very popular in the 1910s, and the first ring-binder and spiral albums, which came with plastic sleeves, appeared from 1950.
Picture stories
Photo albums often contain portraits or memories of significant moments in a family’s or place’s history, and the order of the photos and pages can play an important role in interpreting this history. These are stories that are valuable in themselves because together they form a whole, so make sure you don’t take your photo album apart or mix up the pictures!
Did you know …
… some albums have metal staples, clips or glue that can harm the photos? You should therefore remove and replace them with durable, non-harmful materials such as acid-free paper.
Read our storage tips here.
Dive into the world of photo albums:
Fotoalbum voor 1900: whatsthatpicture from Hanwell, London, UK, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Fotoalbum na 1900: whatsthatpicture from Hanwell, London, UK, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Fotoalbum na 1900: AnonymousUnknown authorderivative work: Photolis, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped
Fotoalbum voor 1900: PMRMaeyaert (talk | contribs), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
About this website
This website is an initiative set up by meemoo, the Flemish Institute for Archives, supported by the Flemish Government and ERDF. Please do not hesitate to contact us with your comments, questions or recommendations. For more information about meemoo, visit www.meemoo.be/en.
The project won an Archive Achievement Award in October 2019, presented by FIAT/IFTA, within the ‘Excellence in Media Preservation’ category.
